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JIRA Manual automation - trigger manual transition through workflow

Adrian Szubert

Hi!

I have once again questions about JIRA automation and issue transitions.

I have created a JIRA automation to generate a QA Task based on the parent Story status - if the Parent reaches a certain status, it generates a QA Task and puts it in a starting status of the workflow.

As I know that automation cannot trigger another automation, I want to create manually triggered automation to initiate a change from starting status to mirror the same status of a Parent story (skipping the need to push it manually through the whole workflow).

The relation between those is set to Parent-Child (where Story is Parent, and QA Task is Child). Everything I try results in setting the starting status on QA Task (so e.g. from TODO to TODO), or results in an error that destination status cannot be reached.

I thought that would be very easy automation, but it is way more complex than expected.

I am looking forward to your support!

BR,

ASZ

Accepted answers

Trudy P Claspill

Hello @Adrian Szubert

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

Where are you getting the information that an automation can't trigger another automation? You have gotten incorrect information.

The actions taken by an Automation Rule can trigger another Automation Rule. If Rule A creates an issue, and Rule B is triggered by creation of an issue, then Rule B can be triggered by the action of Rule A.

There is a checkbox on the Rule Details page of each rule that must be checked in order for this to occur.

Screenshot 2024-07-05 at 8.39.50 AM.png

Is the QA Task an issue type within the Sub-task category? Or is the parent/child relationship created through generic issue linking?

If the QA Task is a Sub-task then you would use a rule like this:

Screenshot 2024-07-05 at 8.59.15 AM.png

Adrian Szubert

Hello @Trudy P Claspill

Thank you for such a clear explanation. I tried to mirror what you have provided (by the way, it is very impressive what you can do in JIRA). As my knowledge using smart values is close to none, I had some struggles even to get the config running, but in the end, it goes - unfortunately throwing errors, due to an invalid operator. Please find the following:

In regards to your question about the post - it was a few months ago, and after reading the post @Bill Sheboy (thank you very much for such an explanation!), I may have understood it the wrong way.

Would you mind supporting me one more time to have that automation working? That's also great learning material!

All comments

Trudy P Claspill

Hello @Adrian Szubert

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

Where are you getting the information that an automation can't trigger another automation? You have gotten incorrect information.

There is a checkbox on the Rule Details page of each rule that must be checked in order for this to occur.

Screenshot 2024-07-05 at 8.39.50 AM.png

Is the QA Task an issue type within the Sub-task category? Or is the parent/child relationship created through generic issue linking?

If the QA Task is a Sub-task then you would use a rule like this:

Screenshot 2024-07-05 at 8.59.15 AM.png

Adrian Szubert

Hello @Trudy P Claspill

Thank you for such a warm welcome.

Just to answer your first question - when I created automation for that QA Task approach, I struggled a bit with issue status transitions (the same scenario - upon the QA Task being created, move it to a certain status in the workflow). I found one of the Atlassian Community answers (that was the top answer in this subject) that was pointing exactly to this limitation - JIRA automation cannot trigger another JIRA automation.

QA Task is a separate custom issue type we have introduced to log time and display just QA activities - anyway, business background does not matter here.

That's a generic link relation.

According to your message, Automation A, can trigger Automation B - but that never worked for me. It just looks like automation is not registering issue creation as a trigger and then it skips it - I have no particular example now except for the following audit log:

As you can see, I had an automation rule triggered by the creation of the issue type "QA Task" - given your message, when Parent Story is set to Ready in XXX status, that creates QA Task. As the Issue type meets the condition, that should trigger Automation B to transition issue status. Every config change was done after a few trials per adjustment to automation - there were not even lines about no actions performed except for one, that I created manually (another issue type).

I have another automation that is triggered based on issue transition and works great (pic below), but the requested one must be triggered manually, and I would like to avoid hardcoding statuses into it (as below), but copy status of the linked Parent.
The closes I got is below:
but then it ends up with a lack of possibility to reach the destination status. We have some validators on the way, but QA Task is a full copy of Parent Story and manually I can easily transition that. They are in the same workflow.

Can it be that we have 4 different workflow paths after In progress?, the system just cannot clone the Parent status value. (that would be weird, as workflow is just one thing, not a separate one).

Trudy P Claspill

I found one of the Atlassian Community answers (that was the top answer in this subject) that was pointing exactly to this limitation - JIRA automation cannot trigger another JIRA automation.

Can you provide a link to that post/answer? I want to add a comment to it if it has incorrect information.

Please provide screen images that show the complete Automation Rule that you use to create the QA Task.

Since you are using a generic issue link to create the parent/child relationship, and the QA Task is not a Sub-task type issue, the sample rule I provided won't work.

The sample rule you provided in your last response is not going to work either because the use of the branch is incorrect. When you use a branch you change the focus of the rule to the issues you select in the branching action. In your branch you are changing from the issue you actual want to change to the issue linked to it. You will need a different structure to your rule.

Screenshot 2024-07-05 at 10.44.41 AM.png

In (1) you would specify "QA Task".

In (2) you would specify "child", or whatever the text is for the other half of your parent/child generic link. In this step you are confirming that the newly created QA Task is linked to another issue with your parent/child link.

In (3) where I have "is bug child of" you would specify the same thing as in (2). In this step you are searching for the issue that is linked to the QA Task as its "parent".

In (4) you are confirming that you found exactly one issue linked to the QA Task as its parent.

Screenshot 2024-07-05 at 10.48.45 AM.png

In (5) you are copying the Status from the parent issue you found in the Lookup Issue action to the QA Task that triggered the rule.

Screenshot 2024-07-05 at 10.49.50 AM.png

You will have to type in the smart value, and then select it where it displays below what you typed in to insert it into the field instead of the default "copy from" text.

Screenshot 2024-07-05 at 10.50.12 AM.png

Bill Sheboy

Hi @Adrian Szubert -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

Regarding the rule triggering information you note, this may be a matter of semantics where:

a rule cannot directly start another rule executing (i.e., one rule cannot call another rule); instead...
the actions performed by one rule can trigger another rule.

There are elaborate workarounds for #1 although I would advise using them sparingly.

Kind regards,
Bill

Adrian Szubert

Hello @Trudy P Claspill

In regards to your question about the post - it was a few months ago, and after reading the post @Bill Sheboy (thank you very much for such an explanation!), I may have understood it the wrong way.

Would you mind supporting me one more time to have that automation working? That's also great learning material!

Trudy P Claspill

@Adrian Szubert

There are a couple of problems with the rule you created and posted here:

Screenshot 2024-07-06 at 10.08.30 AM.png

In 1 and 2 you need to be specifying "Child" not "Parent". If you look at the parent issue in the Linked Issues section what text do you see as the heading above the linked QA Task issue? That is the text you need in 1 and 2.

Additionally 3 is entirely wrong. You should not have a Lookup Issues step there. Delete it. Review the step that i have in my rule at 5. You need to have a Transition Issue step there.

Screenshot 2024-07-06 at 10.11.35 AM.png

Trudy P Claspill

Copying my previous responses into my Answer thread

I found one of the Atlassian Community answers (that was the top answer in this subject) that was pointing exactly to this limitation - JIRA automation cannot trigger another JIRA automation.

Can you provide a link to that post/answer? I want to add a comment to it if it has incorrect information.

Please provide screen images that show the complete Automation Rule that you use to create the QA Task.

Since you are using a generic issue link to create the parent/child relationship, and the QA Task is not a Sub-task type issue, the sample rule I provided won't work.

In (1) you would specify "QA Task".

In (3) where I have "is bug child of" you would specify the same thing as in (2). In this step you are searching for the issue that is linked to the QA Task as its "parent".

In (4) you are confirming that you found exactly one issue linked to the QA Task as its parent.

In (5) you are copying the Status from the parent issue you found in the Lookup Issue action to the QA Task that triggered the rule.

You will have to type in the smart value, and then select it where it displays below what you typed in to insert it into the field instead of

the default "copy from" text.

Trudy P Claspill

(Copying my previous responses into my Answer thread)

@Adrian Szubert

There are a couple of problems with the rule you created and posted here:

Additionally 3 is entirely wrong. You should not have a Lookup Issues step there. Delete it. Review the step that i have in my rule at 5. You need to have a Transition Issue step there.

Trudy P Claspill

Copying my previous responses into my Answer thread

I believe I made a mistake. 1 and 2 should indeed be Parent. Please change those back to Parent and let us see if the rule works then.

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