Rovo prompt for creating CRON statement to run an automation

[Dan W]

Anybody have a Rovo Chat prompt for creating a valid CRON statement to run an automation.  I told it to "Create a Cron statement to run this Jira Automation that runs every other hour starting at 6am stopping at 6pm Monday - Friday and it returned a statement that fails validation.  

I went back to the CRON builder website I have always used in the past, but I would like to be able to recommend the rovo chat to our users as they create their own scheduled automations.  

[Jayesh Raghuvanshi · Accepted solution]

@Dan W 

For your requirement of "every other hour starting at 6am stopping at 6pm Monday-Friday," the correct cron expression is: 0 0 6-18/2 ? * MON-FRI

The most common validation error in Jira Cloud automation cron expressions is the "You must use '?' for either the day-of-month or day-of-week" error. This occurs because

• Both day-of-month and day-of-week cannot have specific values - one must use ?
• When specifying days of the week (MON-FRI), the day-of-month field must be ?
• The year field is optional and often causes issues if included incorrectly

Thanks
Jayesh R

[Gor Greyan]

Hi @Dan W

Glad that solution works.
You can also use this website for crone creation. I am creating crones from here, and it wis orking in Jira.
https://www.freeformatter.com/cron-expression-generator-quartz.html

[Dan W]

I went back and looked at my prompt again and U did not specify it was a Jira automation just an automation.  I rewrote it "create a cron expression to run a Jira automation every 2 hours between 6am and 6pm monday - friday"  and it returned a valid answer. 

0 6,8,10,12,14,16,18 ? * MON-FRI

Jayesh provided a better answer 

0 6-18/2 ? * MON-FRI

As Jayesh said above the main errors in the original returned answer were: 

1. * instead of a question mark for the day of the month and
2. it returned the wrong days.  

Thanks for everybody taking a look at.

[Gor Greyan]

Hi @Dan W

You’re right—Jira Automation (Quartz-style cron) wants literal day names (MON–FRI) or the Quartz numbers where 2–6 = MON–FRI. Using 1–5 means SUN–THU, which fails (is wrong).

Check please this doc: https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftwareserver/constructing-cron-expressions-939938814.html

[Dan W]

The part wrong with the returned results was the automation wants Mon-Fri and the prompt returned 1-5 which is wrong anyway it should have been 2-6