Automate flag when issue more than X days in column

Melina Parisi

Hello! 
I was wondering if there's any way to flag automatically a ticket when the field "days in column" is more than X days. 

I've tried with automations but I can't find the way to add the "days in column" 

Thanks in advanced

Bill Sheboy

Hi @Melina Parisi 

The information about "days in column" appears to be dynamically calculated from the history, so it is not easy to access from an automation rule.

Some possible work-arounds depend about the status values and columns for your board, and your desired level of effort:

• If your steps are just to-do, in-progress, and done, you could compare the Status Category Changed Date to Now to measure the time, such as this expression for the elapsed business days:

{{#=}}max(1,{{issue.statuscategorychangedate.toDate.convertToTimeZone(reporter.timeZone).diff(now.convertToTimeZone(reporter.timeZone)).businessDays}}){{/}}

• Another approach is to add a custom field to save when an issue transitions into a status (or column's mapped status).  Then perform the same diff() on Now for the elapsed time.  To do this, add the custom field, add one rule to set it on issue transition, and add a scheduled rule (e.g every 24 hours) to check your condition for flagging.
• A more complicated approach would be to call the REST API from the rule to read issue history and directly measure the time.  This could be a very slow rule, depending upon the number of issues on the board.
• There are marketplace reporting addons which do this kind of analysis.  No doubt...others will reply to this thread to suggest those  :^)

Kind regards,
Bill