Is there any way to limit the number of issues based on their due date and another custom field?

Question

We use issues a schedule, so people will create issues demanding certain tasks to be executed on a given day.

We have a custom field to identify the "Category" of that demand. What we need is to be able to limit the number of demands for each category for each week, and prevent the creation, or at least email someone, when this limit is crossed.

I believe the best trigger to the verification would be the creation of the issue - so, every time any issue were created, we needed an automation to scan the week relative to the given due date and check if there were a X number of demands on that week with the same value on the field "Category".

Do you know of any way to achieve this?

(Something that may be worth mentioning is that the "Category" field is a multiple selection list field, so every task can have multiple categories)

Tim Kopperud · Answer

Hi @mateus.oliveira, as you have discovered Jira server/DC lacks Advanced Branching. This makes it, as I understand, impossible to currently use automation to solve this.

I also understand you are using Confluence based on your other question.

Would it be a feasible approach to use Confluence as place where the users can check for free dates before submitting a ticket?

If so, my next question is if your Confluence instans have the Table Filter and Charts for Confluence app installed?

Using this app you should be able to create a detailed chart of free and occupied time slots (e.g., in green and red). It is the Table Transformer macro which is included in this app that I think will be helpfull to do the "data analyzing" here.

TimK

mateus.oliveira · Answer

Hi Tim, thank you so much for taking your time to explain the possibilities.

Honestly, I'm not sure if apps from Market place are an option, but I believe they're not... all of our Jira projects are managed by our company, and they're usually really restrict regarding customization. I'll reach for our support and check if we're allowed to use apps, or if we can ask them to enable it for our project.

I'm not used to script on Jira, and I'm a totally amateur with Javascript, but if it's possible to script something like that, I'd take as much time as needed to implement this, because it'd be a great solution.

But, just in case we are not allowed to use the apps, is there something else you believe we could try?

Once again, thank you!

Tim Kopperud · Answer

Hi @mateus.oliveira, welcome to Atlassian Community. Just an idea first. If an app from the market place is an alternative option you could solve this rather elegantly by creating a drop down which dynamically lists only free days or spots. So, if in example you have 10 issues booked for a certain date, and 10 is the max for that date, this date will not be listed as an alternative in the drop down. This might be regarded as a complex solution if your not into scripting though. I'm thinking of e.g. Power custom fields. (Notice I have no affiliation with this vendor, only long experience with their Power suite addons).

Before we go into solving your actual question regarding scanning weekly demands using automation, please comment here if the idea above is something you might go for, or not. If not I will look into a rule example. Also notice a weekly scanning sending the user a notification that the date they selected was after all not avilable might not be so user friendly, hence the reason for my first tip.

TimK.