Counting Assignees in Child Issues with Jira Automation

Question

Hi Community,

I'm trying to count unique assignees in child issues using Jira Automation. I have a custom field (customfield_18610) that stores assignee usernames separated by commas. For example:

adminbr,Diego,Diego

I want to count the number of unique assignees and store that value in another field. I’ve tried the following expressions, but they always return 0:

In this case, the expected unique count should be 2, since Diego appears twice but should only be counted once.

Is there a way to properly transform this field into a list and count the unique values using distinct or any other method in Jira Automation?

I’d appreciate any help or suggestions!

Diego Martínez_wi16jh · Answer

I already tried that approach. I first stored the webhook response in a custom field, then applied split() on that field, and finally used distinct() on the result. Unfortunately, it still didn’t work.

I understand that this might be due to the Jira version I’m using, and if that’s the case, there’s probably nothing else that can be done. :(

Thanks for your help!

Bill Sheboy · Answer

Wow, that is an older version...and was just after distinct was added for Server / Data Center, so I wonder if there are problems in the earlier release.

Let's try this:

* using your original expression, set the first field (without the distinct)
* add a Re-fetch Issue action
* using the Log action, write that first issue field to the log to check what it contains
* using another Log action, add the distinct to the field to check if it works on just the field split() into a list

Diego Martínez_wi16jh · Answer

Hi Bill! :D

I tried using the smart value:

{{webhookResponse.body.issues.fields.assignee.key.distinct.join(",")}}

However, it does not return any value.

I assume it should return:

adminbr,JIRAUSER22508

If the original value from the webhook response is:

adminbr,JIRAUSER22508,JIRAUSER22508

When I use this smart value to edit the custom field:
{{webhookResponse.body.issues.fields.assignee.key.join(",")}}

this is what I get:

adminbr,JIRAUSER22508,JIRAUSER22508

And in my currently version of Jira we don't have variables :(

(v8.20.30)

Also, I have already added the Re-fetch action after the first edit, but the issue persists.