How to branch in automation and return results from each loop back to rule

Michelle Sullivan_e8ise8

So am trying to create an automation based on a comma separated list of data that gets passed out to an external site/url then it collects the returns for the requests and put it in a comment.

 

Currently have this working like a treat except that each loop on the data creates a comment on a single result request.. so if I add 40 pieces of data I get 40 comments. 

This works but is quite unreadable and wanted to create a table of results and pass that into a single comment in the issue.. is this possible?

For reference this is the data that currently goes in each comment:

 

Target: {{userProvidedListItem}}

🧾 Response

- **HTTP Status:** `{{webResponse.status}}`
- **Message:** `{{webResponse.body.message}}`
- **Details:**
- `statusCode`: `{{webResponse.body.details.statusCode}}`
- `body`: `{{webResponse.body.details.body}}`

 

Ideally I'll process these a little differently before adding them to the comment.. for example if {{webResponse.status}} is 200 I don't need to record it - but if its 4xx or 5xx I should record it.  So a resulting comment might be displayed as a Table such as:

 

Target                   | Message                      | code                                    | body
=====================================================================================================================================
{{userProvidedListItem}} | {{webResponse.body.message}} | {{webResponse.body.details.statusCode}} | {{webResponse.body.details.body}}
{{userProvidedListItem}} | {{webResponse.body.message}} | {{webResponse.body.details.statusCode}} | {{webResponse.body.details.body}}
{{userProvidedListItem}} | {{webResponse.body.message}} | {{webResponse.body.details.statusCode}} | {{webResponse.body.details.body}}
{{userProvidedListItem}} | {{webResponse.body.message}} | {{webResponse.body.details.statusCode}} | {{webResponse.body.details.body}}
{{userProvidedListItem}} | {{webResponse.body.message}} | {{webResponse.body.details.statusCode}} | {{webResponse.body.details.body}}

 

Where each line (data and result) corresponds to each loop iteration.

 

Thanks,

 

Michelle 

Bill Sheboy

Hi @Michelle Sullivan -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

For a question like this, context is important for the community to help.  Please post the following:

• what version of Jira are you using: Cloud, Server, or Data Center
• for Cloud, what type of project is this: company-managed, team-managed, JPD, etc.
• an image of your complete automation rule in a single image for continuity
• images of any relevant actions / conditions / branches
• an image of the audit log details showing the rule execution
• explain what is not working as expected and why you believe that to be the case

Until we see those...

 

Automation rule branch which could be on more-than-one-thing execute in parallel and asynchronously, with no guarantee of when the branch will finish up until the last step of the rule.  (There is an in-progress suggestion to make this configurable, and we have no idea what Atlassian will actually implement for it.)

For your apparent scenario, the steps after the branch will start running before the branch completes, and so one comment would not be possible if each pass through the loop is calling out to a REST API endpoint.

Possible workarounds depend upon the number of items and your risk-tolerance for complex rules:

• Build this completely outside of Jira, greatly simplifying the rule and reducing the risk of errors
• Build an external endpoint which can loop over and accumulate the results, and call that one from the rule, finally adding the comment from the web response
• Try a recursive rule approach (which can be risky, error-prone, and brittle)
  • Create one rule which starts the process, can calls another rule using the Send Web Request action
  • The second rule uses an Incoming Webhook trigger, and recursively processes the items, calling itself again and chaining results.  When there is nothing else to process, add the accumulated results in the comment.

 

Kind regards,
Bill