New Conditions in Triggers - no difference in Audit Log

Question

With the new Conditions directly in the Automation trigger I would have expected that the Rule is not triggered at all if the condition fails.

However we cannot see any difference in the Audit log between conditions in the trigger and conditions as first components. Both show "no actions performed" if the condition isn't met.

I would have expected to at least see a different lozenge in the Audit log, or even no rule execution at all.

The Automation UI says

Conditions must be met before a rule is triggered.

Anyone else stumbled upon that behaviour?

Bill Sheboy · Answer

Greetings, community!

For the present time, I recommend not using this new rule feature to add conditions to triggers.

There are known racetrack timing problems with some triggers whereby the data may not be completely available when the rule starts; the work item can even be in an unstable state with no work item type available.  This symptom will appear as incorrect condition results or weird errors (e.g., no permission to access the work item).  Thus, adding conditions to the trigger will further conceal the problem when it happens.

For the Work Item Created trigger, the mitigation is to always add the Re-fetch Work Item Data action immediately after the trigger and before other steps.  In fact, there was a defect for the new feature and the workaround suggested by Atlassian was essentially: don't use this feature with this trigger.  Later, they added "cannot reproduce".

The Atlassian team knows about the racetrack timing problem, and has stated: we are working on architecture changes to fix this and we do not have a timeframe for doing so.  Unfortunately, there is no public defect for us to watch for this work.  Please look here to see that post:

https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Automation-articles/Unlock-Advanced-Workflow-Orchestration-With-These-New/bc-p/3064530#M1996

Kind regards,
Bill

Marc -Devoteam- · Answer

Hi @Rebekka Heilmann _viadee_

This seems to not exist yet, see raised feature request AUTO-1946

Jaime Escribano _knowmad mood_ · Answer

I imagine the rule has to trigger in order for the conditionals to evaluate.

In both cases (conditionals included in the trigger or not) the rule won't count to automation limits -> No actions performed.

Seems like the change was only on the front-end of things to make rules tidier.