Is the Object Deleted trigger pointless as no data emain in the object to actually do anything?

__ Jimi Wikman

I was hoping to be able to trigger either comments or deleting of work items connected using the object id and a custom field that have the object field stored.

As it turns out, you can't use any attributes from the deleted object, so you can't really do anything with this trigger?

This seems to be a silly way to handle object data on delete if we are supposed to be able to automate based on a deleted object, so I must miss something?

How is this trigger meant to actually work if it triggers after the deleting has happened and there is no resistance in the Asset deletion process to ensure its data is available for the automations to use it?

I was expecting a soft delete with a cron to do the hard delete later, but I guess this is not the case?

Or am I missing something obvious here?

Bill Sheboy

Hi @__ Jimi Wikman 

First thing, I am not using assets, and thus my suggestions are based on what I know about rules in general.  With that out of the way...

My understanding is much of asset object data is looked up just-in-time as the rule proceeds.  However, I wonder if there is "some" data still available in {{object}} after the object deleted triggers which can still be referenced.

 

For work items, the rule engine somehow captures the work item before / during deletion when the issue-deleted event triggers the rule.  Thus, even though it is "gone", or soon will be, many of the smart values are still available when the rule is running.  Although, one needs to be careful how they are used. 

For example, a rule with a Work Item Deleted trigger cannot use a branch on JQL, because that branch automagically adds this to the JQL: AND key != {{triggerIssue.key}}  But that will cause the rule to fail because it cannot even test that key with JQL in the rule.  Several other branch types can be used, and reference values from the deleted work item.

Perhaps the same happens for the deleted object, and you could experiment to test this by writing to the audit log.

 

Kind regards,
Bill