Automation & Round-Robin

Question

Hello,

An user has created an Automation involving "Round-Robin assignee method". The automation is working fine . . . but

- How do we know or retrieve the next assignee's name at any given time?

In any automation system, the next value to be used is stored into a file and it can be retrieved by calling a  "variable". How does this work in Jira? Does Jira have such type variable's name?

M

Rilwan Ahmed · Answer

Hi @CoiramOrg

I am not aware of any smart values to show next assignee. But when you create the automation rule, you need to give the list of assignees. Jira will be taking assignee in that given order.

So if you have the list, you will know the next assignee.

CoiramOrg · Answer

@Rilwan Ahmed thank you for your reply but you have just described how Round-Robin works.

In IT Data Stack there is the concept of FIFO - First In First Out a way to manipulate a Data Structure in a sequential way. In FIFO you know which one was the last manipulated variable and which one will be manipulated next.

Round-Robin as used in this case is nothing more than a FIFO where the last manipulated variable is re-queued.

For example should I edit the Round-Robin Automation, not touching the IDs, will the sequence restarted? I bet it is! This is not an ideal situation if you have 10 - 20 or 50 of those ID that MUST be dealt in sequence.

I would like to know whether there is way to "call" such variable and retrieve the last value used.

Henrique Machado Scannavino · Answer

@Rilwan Ahmed ,

I have the same doubt, considering that I know who is the last one, how to find out the next one?

Imagine I have 10 guys in my team and the queue is running for days, I don't want to lose track and to be clear who is next on deck, so Imagine that A jira is just assigned to someone in a round-robin fashion, at that moment I would like to send an email/slack message, saying hey the jira was created the assignee is XXX and the NEXT one in queue/deck is XXXX!

There is a smart/value or anything I can type that will show me the value of the next one in queue?

I cannot use the last assigned issue because the round-robin assignment only works (IF) during business hours, so if we had jira created outside that time it would have assigned the oncall ALSO the names under round-robin list get edited if someone is on sickleave or holiday, so looking to the last one assigned would not capture that as well.