How to handle the 100-issue limit in Jira Automation’s Lookup Issues?

Question

Hi, community!

I’m currently facing an issue with an automation that uses the Lookup Issues action in Jira Automation. My JQL query returns more than 100 issues, but I noticed that the component is limited to processing only the first 100 issues. As a result, some critical tasks are being left out.

I would like to know:

1. Is there a way to increase the default 100-issue limit within Jira Automation?

2. If not, what strategies can I use to work around this limitation? I’ve considered splitting the JQL query into subsets, but I’d love to hear if there are better approaches.

Thank you in advance for your help!

David Nickell · Answer

I'm somewhat new to Jira Automation, but a generic approach you may want to apply is this:

* Every ticket has the labels field.  So however you identify the tickets in your JQL as needing your automation, use that logic to add a label to the ticket (e.g.  "Automation_X_Needed").
* Run your automation as is against the JQL looking for your automation label.
* At the end of the automation, remove the label
* optional - add a comment on what automation did

The advantage of the label field is you could try this as soon as you finish reading my answer without having to add any new fields.  And unlike other fields (like components or versions), you can use the same label value across all projects.

This is certainly a low-cost solution to test.

If you start off with 800 tickets, what I hear everyone saying is you can only do 100 at a time.  Okay.... but this process removes 100 from the queue with each execution until you get them all.

Let me know if this works.  Happy Automation

Trudy P Claspill · Answer

Hello @Igor Fernandes

What is the use case for your automation rule?

Could you use a Scheduled rule instead? A Scheduled trigger can use a JQL that returns up to 1000 issues.

https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/automation-service-limits/

Bill Sheboy · Answer

Hi @Igor Fernandes

No, there is no way to change the 100 issues limit as that is from the REST API endpoint limit which rules use to implement actions.

What problem are you trying to solve by gathering that many issues?  Knowing that may help the community to offer better suggestions.

Until we know that...for some strategies to workaround the limit, that depends upon what your rule is doing...

* When you only need the total count of issues matching the JQL, a rule could call the REST API directly to get the count from the results (even though it would only contain 100 issues' details)
* When you are able to use additional JQL criteria to get under the limit, intentionally break up the results with separate lookups for processing.  You could even store the entire lookup results with multiple Create Lookup Table actions to later refer to them just like a lookup.  This could be used to sum, count, etc. fields
* When the rule actions edit the lookup issues in some way, instead consider using a Scheduled Trigger rule with JQL, which can gradually work through the issues, excluding the updated ones with the JQL
* When you need to sum a field from the results, another approach would use #1 above to determine how many calls (with paging) are needed to access the issues.  Then use a second, recursive rule with an Incoming Webhook Trigger to read each page and sum the results, with the final call performing the totaling.  This is a risky and slow approach, and potentially could encounter automation service limits, halting rule processing for the site.
* Investigate marketplace addons which add more SQL-like features to JQL allowing limiting the result set.  I have not personally used any of these, so I have no specific recommendations.
* Build your own application / service which can iterate over more than 100 issues, and call that from your rule, passing the JQL for the needed processing

Kind regards,
Bill