How to use the date smart values in an automation to send an email reminder in the future?

Question

I want to have an automation that allows the user who has a task to do in the far future to use the manual automation option to input a desired due date in the future. This value will then be entered in the Due Date field. As the due date is approaching, the automation should send a reminder email and assign the ticket to the user who triggered the event.

FYI: I chose the manual trigger option because I do not want this to happen everytime the due date is changed, just in selected situations.

Problem with the proposed solution:

the smart values condition does not work as intended. Essentially I want that 3 days before the due date then the email and ticket assignment will be executed. (for reference I read about the smart values for date and time here:

https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/jira-smart-values-date-and-time/ )

but using smart values in this way means that the condition needs to be evaluated not just at the time of the automation execution but until the condition is met --> how to do this?

I am open to feedback on implementing the use case in a better way or any improvements to my proposed solution.

Thanks very much in advance!

Trudy P Claspill · Answer

Hello @Amelia Fraczkowski

You will actually need two rules. You can't do both (set the due date and send emails on some future date) in one rule.

Use one Manual Trigger rule for the user to change the Due Date. In that same rule you will need to set another field, like Labels, to include a value like "Send-Reminder". I see that you are also setting the Assignee to the person who changed the Due Date, so you would do that also in this rule.

When exactly do you want the reminders sent; i.e. 3 days and 2 days and 1 day before the task is due? What if the task is past due?

The second rule would be a Scheduled Trigger rule set to run daily. In the Trigger you would include a JQL to find the issues that have "Send-Reminder" as one of the Labels. The JQL might also include criteria for how the issue Due Date compares to the current date, based on your answer to the question above.

You would then include in that scheduled email an action to Send Email to Assignee of the issue.

Under what circumstances would you want the reminders to stop being sent. If a user has changed the due date through the manual rule, and then the due date is changed again directly (not using the manual rule) then would you want to cancel the sending of reminders in the future?

Rudy Holtkamp · Answer

Hi @Amelia Fraczkowski ,

If you go to the template section of the automation rules, you will find this rule under 'organize tasks':

You can use that one as the base of your automation rule.

Ponnappan Ganapathiya · Answer

Before going into the automation, Are you comparing due date with due date field itself??

I am feeling like it is comparing due date of Aug 8 is equals to Aug 5!!! Am I correct on this?

If it is running without any manual triggers, then you should have gone for Scheduled. So you can compare the time between now and Due date. Hope this works.