Automation: convert mention to a username in text

Question

Hi,

I've created an automation to copy comments from the original issue to a cloned issue. The problem is that any mention triggers a notification to the users mentioned. I would like to know how to convert any mention in the comment to text, so that the notifications are not triggered.

Many thanks

Luka Hummel - codefortynine · Answer

Hi @Fernanda Malcolm

If you are willing to try a third-party app you could try our app Deep Clone for Jira. Deep Clone can clone issues including their comments, and there is an option to suppress notifications for mentioned users.

Bill Sheboy · Answer

Hi @Fernanda Malcolm

It would be easy to "break" the mention syntax (using the replaceAll function) so adding a comment no longer mentions someone, but it seems you want to replace the mentions with the display name of the users.

To learn if this is possible, we would need to see your rule and observe how you are copying the comments.  For example...

* If the rule is copying all the comments in one block to add as one comment (and so preserve their ordering), the replacement of account id values with display names will not be possible with built-in features
* If the rule is iterating over comments to add them with an advanced branch, and more than one user is mentioned per comment, the replacement will not be possible

The scenario that might work in a rule is when there is a branch over comments and zero-or-one user is mentioned.  That could use a REST API function call to find the display name of the user for replacement.  As that will potentially be a very slow rule, you may not want to do this as it could exceed your automation service limits for rule run time execution.

Another option would be to write an external service which performs all the replacements and adds the comments, in the correct order, and then call that service from the rule with a Send Web Request action.  At that point, it may be better to use a marketplace addon for cloning.

Kind regards,
Bill

Mark Segall · Answer

Hi @Fernanda Malcolm

This one is a bit tricky.  You can extract the user id from the @mention by using this smart value:

The challenge comes in converting that.  Smart Values can only work against a user field (e.g. reporter, assignee, custom field) so in order to take the next step of getting the display name, you have a couple options:

* Use a placeholder custom field:* Create or repurpose a custom field.  This will not need to be added to issue screens. It'll just be used long enough to capture the user information
* Before your clone action, use the Edit Issue action to update the custom field from above
* In your copy comment action, you would do something like this* {{comment.body.replaceALL("$$~accountid:(.*?)$$",issue.YOURCUSTOMFIELD.displayName)}}

* Use the Jira API: If you're more technical, you could hit the Jira API via the Send Web Request action to convert the account id into a display name