Creating a value change condition so that I can use the schedule trigger

Question

Hoping for a streamlined approach here. I would like to notify in comments when the Description field changes. Simple enough solve with a Value Change trigger automation, but the comments accumulation is unruly, so I want to throttle the posts by checking every 2 hours for Description changes and leaving a comment.

To my understanding, that requires a Schedule trigger, which means I need to have the value check as a condition. What is the best approach to create a smart values condition to compare two values of the same field at different times?
#changelog.priority ? 
 {{issue.Description.fieldChange.fromString}} {{issue.Description.fieldChange.toString}} ?

I've seen several smart values options, but they don't work well with multi-line text, or I'm forming it incorrectly (high potential on the latter).

Greg Trombo · Answer

Solved with 2 automations and a custom field

1. First automation triggers on Description value changes, then copies to a hidden Custom_Multiline field, if empty (this is a 1 time copy)

2. Second automation triggers on a 2 hour schedule, compares if Description and Custom_Multiline field (if not empty) are exact. If not exact, comment is left and Description overwrites the Custom MultiLine field (making them both the same).

Thus the comments only occur every 2 hours, and only if the Description doesn't match the Custom_Multiline field, mitigating the bombardment of comments.

Thanks @Bill Sheboy for giving me a chance to think on it.  
cheers!

Greg Trombo · Answer

Hi Bill.
Long-time fan of your expertise!
We are working with an external dev vendor with a Project Manager who is transcribing the Story to a separate app (Shortcut), and have some team here that are changing the Description after the vendor performs the intake to their team (in some cases while it's In Progress). Our solution solve (aside from process improvement meetings) was to notify the PM in Jira Comments within the story itself, so that they can update their tickets and teams, but this is proving cumbersome as every small tweak is firing an automated comment, and it's becoming quite ineffective.

That said, we want to reduce the frequency of the comments, by polling for changes in the Description field every 2 hours or so, and posting a comment to the PM if a change was made. Was hoping to avoid an API call, since the system is enterprise wide and the request would potentially die in a governance review.

In the interim, I'll explore some more visual options, like backward workflow status transitions if a Description change is made, but was hoping for a less jarring solution.

Bill Sheboy · Answer

Hi @Greg Trombo -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

What problem are you trying to solve by writing changes to the Description in the Comments field?  That is, "why do this?"  Knowing that may help the community to offer alternative solution approaches.

Until we know that...

The changelog smart values in a rule are only available when a field changes, and not with the Scheduled trigger.

To do what you asked, a Scheduled trigger rule could instead use the REST API (called with the Send Web Request action) to gather the changelog entries directly, filter them for the Description field, and then report the results.  This may be a brittle and resource-intense approach.

Kind regards,
Bill