How to send a notification to start an issue when all of its predecessors have been completed?

[danielle]

I have seen questions regarding sending notifications for an issue based on its due date, but is there any way to trigger a notification to the assignee of an issue that lets them know they are clear to start it because all of the predecessors/dependencies have been met? Like a custom automation or something?

For example, you are assigned Issue C. There is no specific due date for it, but you can't start it until Issue A and Issue B are in a done state. How can we keep that moving without the person constantly checking the dependencies on their tickets by hand? (The issue types are irrelevant, a bug could be dependent on a task or story, etc).

Thank you in advance!

[Bill Sheboy · Accepted solution]

Hi @danielle 

This may be possible with an automation rule...depending upon your assumptions / conditions. 

The rule would be triggered on issues transitioned to done, then checking their links for dependencies, it would walk those issues...checking their dependencies before sending the notification.

One challenge is scale: if you assume fewer than 100 issues to check, a rule can handle that in branching.  But if the linkages fan-outward, the rule could exceed the execution limits for processing and halt.

If you want to try such a rule, please refer to these documentation and example sources to help create your rule:

• https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/guides/automation/overview#what-is-automation
• https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/automation-template-library#/rule-list?systemLabelId=all&page=1&pageSize=20&sortKey=name&sortOrder=ASC
• https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/jira-smart-values-issues/
• https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/use-advanced-search-with-jira-query-language-jql/

If you run into problems, please post images of your rule and the audit log details so the community can help.

Kind regards,
Bill

[danielle]

Thanks Bill!

You're so right about scale, and I definitely don't want to overcomplicate things.

I wound up modifying one of the automation templates (When an issue is resolved -> comment on related issues):

- Used transition to any of the done states as the trigger

- Restricted the linked issues found to only ones of type "blocks"

- Tagged the assignee in the comment and advised them to check on other blockers before proceeding

[Bill Sheboy]

Well done!