Rovo Agent in Automation: Agent responds in Chat sidebar but fails to post comment or trigger condit

[Dorota Kmiecik]

Issue Summary:
I am using a Jira Automation rule to trigger a Rovo Agent for a technical audit when a ticket is transitioned. While the Rovo Agent successfully triggers and displays the correct analysis in the Rovo Chat sidebar on the Jira ticket, the automation rule itself fails to capture that response. The smart value variable remains empty, meaning no comment is posted and subsequent conditions fail.

The Problem:

• Sidebar Success: The Rovo Agent correctly analyzes the ticket and shows the result (e.g., "Status: Incomplete") in the sidebar UI.

• Automation Failure: The "Add Comment" action in the automation rule (using the agent's output variable) posts nothing or is skipped.

• Condition Failure: Subsequent "If/Else" blocks looking for keywords in the agent's response result in "No Action" because the variable appears to be null/empty.

Technical Configuration:

1. Trigger: Issue Transitioned.

2. Action: "Use Rovo Agent"

   • Output variable name: agentResponse

   • Context: Set to "Current Issue."

   • Skills: Jira (Read/Write permissions enabled).

3. Action: "Add Comment"

   • Content: {{agentResponse}}

4. Condition: "Compare two values"

   • Value 1: {{agentResponse}}

   • Condition: matches regular expression (.*Incomplete.*)

Troubleshooting Performed:

• Variable Consistency: Verified that the "Output variable name" in the Rovo block matches the smart value {{agentResponse}} exactly (no spaces, correct casing).

• Permission Testing:

  • Tested "Add comment as" using both the "Automation app user" and the "Rovo Agent" user.

  • Confirmed the Rovo Agent has the "Add Comment" skill enabled.

• Instruction Optimization: Simplified the Agent's instructions to be highly deterministic, forcing a plain-text output to avoid formatting issues.

• Regex Implementation: Switched from "Contains" to "Matches Regular Expression" (.*Incomplete.*) to ensure any hidden formatting (like bolding or emojis) wasn't breaking the condition.

• Audit Log Analysis: The log shows the "Use Rovo Agent" action completes, but the "Response" or "Output" field within the expanded log details does not contain the text that is visible in the Chat sidebar.

Question:
Is there any issue currently, because our other agent works correctly and posts comments without any issue - they have the same permissions and skills ( it was a copy)

[Arkadiusz Wroblewski]

Hello and Welcome to Atlassian Community @Dorota Kmiecik 

Keep in mind that Rovo Agents in Automation don't execute skills like "Add Comment" directly; they return a text payload that Automation passes to smart values.

Run a simple manual debug rule using a Log action to inspect {{agentResponse.asString}}, and use that plain text version for both your rule condition and comment action. Verify there is no trailing space in your output variable name, as an extra space will break smart value resolution.

You should also try reducing the prompt and issue context size and see what happens.

Your problem are partly documented here [ROVO-288] Rovo Agents sometimes return no response - Create and track feature requests for Atlassian products.

Best,
Arek🤠