In automation, how do I assign a task to a team member from a custom field

[Aimee]

Hi everyone, I've seen similar posts, read through Jira documentation to troubleshoot my issue but I'm a bit stuck so asking for help from the community.

Here's a screengrab of my automation, once I've created a task and upon popping it into a sprint I want it cloned and assigned to the person I've selected in a custom field called Design Assignee. The original task is assigned to someone else on the team as they work in pairs on the same project. 

Everything works up until the assigning element, I've also tried this syntax {{issue.customfield.xxxxxx}} but it also doesn't work. The custom field is a selection picker so I thought perhaps I need to change the selected team member from the picker into an account ID - as you can see in the screengrab but it also throws an error.

The error in the audit says "unable to assign the issues to the selected users" saying that "(Specified user does not exist or you do not have required permissions).

I checked my permissions and I have no permission issues. 

Hopefully I've given enough info, would anyone be able to help me resolve this?

Thank you, Aimee

[Bill Sheboy · Accepted solution]

Hi @Aimee -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

If you have the correct smart value or custom field ID for your field, using the accountId is the correct method.  Have you confirmed the smart value / custom field ID, such as with this how-to article: https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/find-the-smart-value-for-a-field/

Next, smart values are name, spacing and case sensitive, and when an incorrect one is used that returns as null.  The correct one is accountId: https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/jira-smart-values-users/#User-properties

Perhaps try this, after confirming your custom field ID:

{{issue.customfield_12345.accountId}}


Or, if the source is the trigger issue, use this:

{{triggerIssue.customfield_12345.accountId}}

Finally, you want to assign the newly cloned issue, correct? If so, the rule is missing a branch to "most recently created issue":

• trigger: value changes for sprint
• condition: sprint is not empty
• action: clone issue
• action: link issue to trigger
• branch to most recently created issue
  • action: assign issue

Kind regards,
Bill

[Aimee]

Thank you for your reply Bill. I gave this a go and unfortunately I'm still stuck. 

The screengrab of the ticket hopefully shows what I'm trying to do with the amendments you kindly guided me - For my sanity I'm creating a ticket and upon applying a sprint I want the automation to create a cloned ticket that is a Design Counterpart. I would like the trigger ticket and the Design Counterpart to be linked and the Design Counterpart ticket to be assigned to the Design Assignee.

So far as you can see I've gotten the cloning part to work, but I can't get the linking or assigning the cloned ticket to the Design Assignee working.

The trigger ticket will be assigned to the PM Assignee so that both team members have their respective tickets for a task. 

I also have the automation screengrabbed and the error in the audit if that helps with further context. 

What am I configuring incorrectly to have the linking and assigning not work properly?

Thank you in advance for your help.

[Bill Sheboy]

Thanks for the additional information, and...

Please change the branch to "most recently created issue" to access the new one.  Otherwise your rule is linking the trigger issue to itself and re-assigning it to the Design Assignee.

After that change and re-testing, let us know what you observe.  Thanks!

[Aimee]

Hi Bill thank you for your reply!

I amended the branch to most recently created issue - thank you for the explanation along with that. That made the 2 tasks link correctly. 

Lastly I wasn't able to get the assignee quite right so I did end up asking chat gpt for that final piece and the final syntax was:

{{triggerIssue.fields.customfield_xxxxx.accountId}}

As you mentioned about the case sensitive elements I made sure those were proper, but I was missing ".fields" - I've finally made what I need to work with your assistance.

Thank you so much

Aimee

[Bill Sheboy]

That is interesting as "fields" should not be needed when the correct smart value (or custom field ID for some cases) is used.

FYI -- I recommend not using automation answers suggested by chat bots as it may lead to wasting a lot of time.  Such guessing tools cannot access your Jira site (even the one provided by Atlassian) and so the generic answers are not based on the Jira version, project type, issue type, workflow, field, rule details, etc. configurations.  I have read several posts of people wasting days trying to get such things to work, only to learn later the "guess" was for a completely different version of Jira!

[John Funk]

Hi Aimee - Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

Instead of doing an Assign Issue, simply add the Assignee field to the Clone Issue. Then for the Assignee field, click on the 3 dots and choose copy. Then choose Trigger Issue and the field you want to copy from the trigger issue. 

[Aimee]

Thank you for your help John, I've provided some more context in the reply with Bill - I'd like the 2 tickets to be assigned to different people based on my custom fields as both team members work on the same task.