Automation: Trying to create labels based on a combination of fields.

George Tsemberlis

Hi there! For the sake of this question we have three custom fields in play:

 

CustomField1 - a single select Radio Buttons field

CustomField2 - a Checkbox field

CustomField3 - another single select Radio Buttons field

We need to power a couple automations based on combinations of these fields, but CustomField2 has 12 options in it so the possible permutations would be a lot to hard code. What we want to do is iterate through the list of CustomField2 selections on an issue, and create labels combining the values of all 3 fields together.

Example:
Customer selects CustomField1 "Value A"
Customer selects CustomField2 "Value A", "Value D", "Value F", "Value M"

Customer selects CustomField3 "Value C"

 

Ideally this creates 4 labels:

CustomField1.A-CustomField2.A-CustomField3.C

CustomField1.A-CustomField2.D-CustomField3.C

CustomField1.A-CustomField2.F-CustomField3.C

CustomField1.A-CustomField2.M-CustomField3.C

in the issue

 

Is this possible? 

Bill Sheboy

Hi @George Tsemberlis 

I suggest not using branching to solve this.  Branches on more-than-one-thing (e.g. JQL, advanced branches, etc.) process asynchronously and in parallel.  If you are repeatedly trying to update the same issue you could run into collision and timing challenges.

Another way to solve this, and make one single issue edit, is to use an iterator over your multi-select field to build all of the labels in one JSON expression, and then use advanced edit to save them.

For example...

• create a variable
  • variable name: varAddLabels
  • smart value...

{{#issue.customField2}}{ "add": "{{issue.customField1.value}}-{{value}}-{{issue.customField3.value}}" } {{^last}}, {{/}}{{/}}

This works by iterating over the values of your customField2, and adding the other field values around them, to build up a JSON expression.

• and then edit the issue, using the More Options to add JSON for adding labels

{
  "update": {
    "labels": [
      {{varAddLabels}}
    ]
  }
}

 

Three more things...

I recommend adding a condition after your trigger to check if your fields have any values selected before proceeding to adding/changing labels.

What do you want to do if the custom field values change?  Rather than performing updates, you may need to first remove all existing labels and always write them anew.  If that cannot be done for some reason, I suspect this approach may not be viable for you.

And, automation is often about experimentation and learning.  It can help to look at the examples in the automation library to combine ideas from other rules to solve your needs.

 

Kind regards,
Bill