In automation, how can you differentiate between statuses with the same name?

[Oliver Fowler]

Hi!

I'm working on an automation workflow.

I am using a project setup I would think is very common, where I have multiple projects with the same column name "Done" on each of their boards.

When creating an automation rule, the statuses are presented without any way of knowing which corresponds to which project.

Example:

I think it shouldn't be hard to simply display the project name in parenthesis instead of these mystery numbers.

At the very least, there should exist documentation as to what those numbers are or how to search for them to see which status relates to which project. I cannot find any way to search for those numbers, nor any label or use for them at all.

Thanks for your help,

Luke

[Jack Brickey]

It appears that you are dealing with a TMP project or at least the image you presented above illustrates this. One issue with TMP projects is that the statuses are self contained within the project. What that means is Done in TMP project 1 is not the same as Done in TMP project 2. This explains the 10012, 10016, 10023.

Unfortunately I don't play with TMP projects much and as such I'm not certain how to discern which done status applies to a specific TMP project. Hopefully Trudy or someone else happens along here that does. Certainly feel free to search the community for potential answers.

[Trudy Claspill]

I only experiment with the TMP projects to try to answer questions. My expertise lies more with the CMP projects.

We have TMP and CMP projects in our environment, many with the Done status. Our TMP projects say that the Done status is shared across multiple workflows, and the Delete button is disabled for deleting that status in our TMP projects. When I try to construct an automation rule, whether at the Project or Global level, I'm only seeing one Done value show up in the picklist. I can't recreate what Luke is seeing.

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Oliver Fowler -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

And hello to Trudy and Jack!

Curious symptom...I tried to replicate this issue with CMP and TMP in both standard and free Jira Software instances and was unable to recreate it for a global automation rule.  The only deliberate way I can think to do this is to intentionally rename the Done status values in a TMP project's workflow, e.g. Done (12345)

Best regards,
Bill

[Jack Brickey]

I took another look as well and it is quite perplexing. I tried creating a global rule, TMP project rule and CMP project roll and could not re-create this. Clearly there is something unique in @Oliver Fowler instance.

@Oliver Fowler , it would be greatly appreciated if you could get back to us here and share more information with what you're doing so that we might understand the cause, address it and benefit others that search or have this issue in the future.

[Jack Brickey]

One more thought on this.

The one thing I haven't tried, because I don't have multiple TMP projects, is if you create a multi-project automation rule and list specific TMP projects what is presented in the drop-down for the To status? Theory - if you have the Done status in each of the TMP projects will it appear only as a single Done status or multiple?

[Oliver Fowler]

Hi @Jack Brickey , @Bill Sheboy , and @Trudy Claspill , thank you very much for your help and experimentation! As I replied to Trudy, this was with 3 TMPs created from the Scrum template.

When creating a new Global rule and using the "Issue transitioned" trigger option, it does not appear that there's an option to select which project(s) it applies to. This is fine for this particular rule. I wasn't the one that set up this rule, but as my team is decently new to Jira I thought that it was a default rule created by Jira.

Here's another screenshot, taken after one of our projects was deleted and I renamed the remaining two projects' "Done" columns to "Completed". I can assure y'all that I am not adding the parenthesis and numbers myself. The numbers remained the same, showing that they're essentially the actual "ID" of the object relating to the status column.

Imo it is helpful that the statuses would not appear identically so that one could create global rules and apply that kind of project filtering through the settings of the trigger used. However, the current labels aren't any more helpful than if they were separate without the labels or a single option matching all instances of that status across projects.

[Oliver Fowler]

@Jack BrickeyI haven't worked with a CMP so I don't know their distinctions well at all, I don't think any of us have tried creating a CMP since moving to Jira about 3 months ago. What I do know is that my team does not currently want to have completely identical statuses/columns across our projects/boards. E.g, our current two boards share the "To Do", "In Progress", and "Done" statuses, while also having at least one other unique status.

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Oliver Fowler   

Thanks for that information.  Just to confirm, do you *only* have TMP in your instance?  Have you ever added a CMP to the instance?

[Oliver Fowler]

@Bill SheboyWe setup 5 CMPs and 5 TMPs initially, then moved to the 3 TMPs from my original screenshot two weeks ago, before simplifying to 2 TMPs just yesterday, Sept 1st. Hope that helps.

[Bill Sheboy]

Thanks, Oliver.  I was trying to rule out the edge-case of a free instance which only ever had TMP; sounds like that is not it.

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Oliver Fowler 

Welcome to the community.

Are you using Company Managed projects, Team Managed projects, or both?

Are you defining a project-level automation or a global-level automation?

[Oliver Fowler]

Thank you for your response Trudy!

These are statuses from three Team Managed projects all created from the Scrum template, and I'm defining a global rule.

I tried changing the column names in each project to "Completed" instead.

Now, in automation I see the same numbers with new names [Completed (10012), Completed (10016), Completed (10023)].

I am open to try any solution that does not involve exporting, deleting, and importing the projects. Thanks again for your help!