automation to control how an issue is injected into an already started sprint

[Gordon Varney]

I'm sure I'm far from the first... Help.

The POs have a habbit of assigning issues to predefined future sprints. So, the Sprint field value is not empty. Despite being asked not to, they feel enabled to drag issues in to an active sprint (injecting it). (Lets not get into how often I've asked/told them to not do this.)

New strategy. Give them a easy way to do it that lets me through some background automation, at least do it well.

I'd like to give them a manually triggered (by them, automation) that asks for what issue they want injected, validate the key exists, maybe a bit more about status and such, has SP assigned, thenask what issue they offer to take out of the sprint, again some validation, then for the one to be injected, add "+midsprint" to lables, change the Sprint to the currently active one, for the one to come out, write -midsprint to labels and change Sprint to put this issue at the top of the (sprint) backlog. Validate both happened. As the user to provide a brief reason for the injection (I was thinking a check list but I think no, get them to write "something". That gets added, with other timestamp kinda things,who is doing it, to the issues comments (one going in and one coming out).

And now lets say dreaming: email the Product Owner, Scrum Master, senior dev and senior test letting them know, have a record, that this happend.

Tell me that already exists, somewhere. 

Pure fantisy:

• if the issue going in has no SP assigned or is 0 say no,
• if the issue going in is greater than the one coming out, ask for another to come out to be (closer) to equal,
• if (for kicks and giggles) if I allow a (I know, i know, but...) 1 day per SP, can the team finish this within the current sprint - if no, don't allow them to bring in.

Or, LOL, part of that?

Cheers.

JGV

[Andrea Robbins]

Like the rest have stated here, automation is the way to go and it has to be after it is added to the sprint. I've done some api stuff in the browser as I am not sure if a sprint smart value is available, but I can see here (the sprint field) that there is a sprint state property available:

"customfield_10020": [
{
"id": 1,
"name": "MOBL Sprint 1",
"state": "active",
"boardId": 2,
"goal": "",
"startDate": "2024-04-01T00:00:00.000Z",
"endDate": "2024-04-30T00:00:00.000Z"
}
],

versus if it is a future sprint:

"customfield_10020": [
{
"id": 5205,
"name": "Sprint 2025-04-18H12",
"state": "future",
"boardId": 1,
"goal": "This is the latest sprint and our goal is to complete the sprint.",
"startDate": "2025-04-18T13:15:01.000Z",
"endDate": "2025-04-18T23:10:01.000Z"
}
],

Again not sure about a smart value, but what you can do is when the field value changed for the Sprint field, send a GET web request, and if the {{webResponse.body.<continue drilling down till you get to your sprint custom field>.state}} is active as a smart value condition, then clear out the Sprint field and add a comment, tagging the {{initiator}}.

That would be my recommendation. :) 

[Andrea Robbins]

Confirmed it is {{webResponse.body.fields.customfield_10020.state}}

[John Funk]

Hi Gordon - Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

I don't have the time to completely delve into this - I am sure others will jump in anyway - but you could do a Manual triggered automation rule that would be executed/fired from the work item they want to add. They would navigate to that work item and open it, then fire the rule. 

With that you could add a prompt asking just for the key of the work item they want to take out of the current Sprint. 

Then update the Sprint field to populate the current active Sprint into the trigger work item. 

You would pass in the key of the work item to take out into a variable in the rule, then use that probably in a Lookup Issues query to find it. Then update it to clear the Sprint field. 

Give that a whirl and then post back here what you get to before having problems and folks will jump in. Or they might have a better idea what to do. I am sure the automation GOAT @Bill Sheboy would have a better way to do it!

[Gordon Varney]

Tried and tried and tried. Better part of 3+ hours over a couple days. And that was just to try to get a MVP/Hello World kinda thing.
The Internet is full of people who want this, and lots of suggestions on how to report on it after the fact, but...

Thanks for chiming in.
JGV

[John Funk]

Can you share what you have built so far? Then we can help from there. 

[Mikael Sandberg]

Hi @Gordon Varney,

Welcome to Atlassian Community!

It can be done with Automation, but all your checks would happen after the work item is added to the sprint. You cannot use automation to prevent it from happening in the first place. If you go down the route with automation then your sprint report would show that items were added and removed from the sprint if the work item doesn't meet your requirements.  

[Mikael Sandberg]

Also, automations cannot stop and wait for additional input from the user, you would have to gather all the input when the automation is triggered and then act on it.

[Gordon Varney]

I'd be happy to try. The user will be in the issue they want to inject, so I really only need to have them say which one to take out.