Has anyone come up with a way to have "subroutines" or "modules" in Jira Automation Rules?

Question

I have two situations that I've done a workaround for in Rules automation and want to see if anyone has a better solution.

* You're limited to 65 steps in an automation rule.  In this case, I have created a custom field like "Action1_flag".  Then, when I have used up most of my 65 steps, I set the Action1_flag field to 1 as the last thing I do in the rule.  Then I have another rule called Action1 and it is run when the Action1_Flag field is modified. In that rule, I check and see if the Action1_Flag is set to 1 and if it is, I set it to 0 and then I perform the remainder of the steps that I didn't have room for in the initial rule where I set the Action1_Flag
* Sometimes I have steps that need to be done by multiple rules.  An example are some complex calculations or something with a lot of steps and I don't want to have to repeat this in every rule where I need it as they may change and then I'd have to make the changes in all the rules. In this case, I do the same type of thing as described above.  When I get to the point in the rule where I need those steps taken, I set a flag, maybe Action2_Flag in this case, and then the Action2 rule performs those steps.  It's not exactly a subroutine as it doesn't return control, but it gets the job done.

Any thought on how to do this better or differently?

Mark Segall · Answer

I've found that I can oftentimes replace complex if/else conditions with a combination of lookup tables and advanced branching.  If you're interested, please share the business logic that is driving your if/else branching.

Cash Coyne_tanpr0 · Answer

I've re-worked it a number of times and is about as tight as it can get.  One problem is that while there is an If-Then-Else construct in automation, you can't come back to the original workflow and that requires a lot of redundancy.

Mark Segall · Answer

Hi @Cash Coyne - Based upon what you're sharing about exceeding the number of components, you're taking a popular approach. However, it would be helpful to understand the problem the rules are trying to solve.  There may be opportunity to reduce the number of components and improve efficiency.