Creating a custom field that only the automation user can change

Question

This appears to be an issue with CLONE action in Automation Rule - see end

For the purpose of automatically creating Release notes, I have created a custom text field called "Abbreviated Description" and I have an automation that just fills that field with the first 200 characters of the Description field whenever the Description field is changed.

I have a number of automations involved in automatically creating the Release notes and all works fine when I set the show/hide field to "Show" in the Field configuration and I add the field to the Screens for the issues with that field on (Create/edit and View all using same screen).

However, I want to make the "Abbreviated Description" field unavailable to any user to change and I thought that I could set the Show/Hide field to "Hide" in the Field configuration and remove the field from the Screens and that by running the Automations as the "Automation for Jira" user and therefore by default, the role "atlassian-addons-project-access", the automations would still be able to set those fields.  But obviously my understanding is incorrect because I get the error "Unknown fields set during clone, they may be unavailable for the project/type. Check your custom field configuration. Fields ignored - Abbreviated Description (customfield_14356)"

I know one way of doing this would be to set the Show/Hide field to "Show" in the Field configuration and just include the field in the View screen and not the Create and edit screens but this means potentially creating a lot more screens for different issue types in different Projects and I would rather avoid that.

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After some further testing, specifically, it is if I CLONE in the automation that I get the failure. So custom field is set to HIDE in field Configuration and is not on any of the screens for the issue.  The automations both run as the "Automation for Jira" user and therefore by default, the role "atlassian-addons-project-access",

The first automation works fine and sets the "Abbreviated Description" custom field when triggered.  But the 2nd automation, when manually triggered from exactly the same issue, fails with "Unknown fields set during clone, they may be unavailable for the project/type. Check your custom field configuration. Fields ignored - Abbreviated Description (customfield_14356)". Can anybody help me understand why ?

Rees, Ian · Answer

Thanks Rudy, option1 I'm aware of and want to avoid because of the work involved in creating new screens for different projects.  The 2nd option sounds interesting - could you elaborate a bit more on issue.property - not sure how that would work.

Rees, Ian · Answer

Thanks - not sure I understand why the automation setting the fields on the issue works fine though but the automation cloning and cloning the custom field fails on exactly the same issue.

Rudy Holtkamp · Answer

Hi @Rees, Ian ,

If you want you can also use a read-only field, which you can only set via the automation. This field can be added to the edit/view screen.

Another option, if you don't want to show the info, is to use an issue.property, which can be set and read from an automation rule. But note that you can JQL on the issue property.

Good luck,

Rudy