Extract a date from description string and apply to Due date

Question

Hiya folks,

I am trying to extract a date from Description and apply that date to the 'Due date' field. For example the description has the format 'Date – 10/11/2025' .

I would like to extract 10/11/2025 from above and set the 'Due date' field in the work item to populate this.

I've tried to use the following regex in the automation rule and Edit work item field using {{issue.description.match("\d{2}\/\d{2}\/\d{4}").toDate}}

However, haven't had any luck so far.

Any help/suggestions are much appreciated.

Best,

Faheem

Bill Sheboy · Answer

Hi @Faheem Mushreef -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

Just following up to check if one of the suggestions answered your question.  If so, please consider marking the relevant one(s) as "answered".  That will help others with a similar need find solutions faster.

If not, from what you show, I notice your match() function's regular expression is missing the group parentheses, and the toDate() function is missing the format.  For example:

{{issue.description.match("(\d{2}\/\d{2}\/\d{4})").toDate("MM/dd/YYYY")}}

Please note this will produce a list of values due to the match(), so add appropriate list functions to handle the zero-to-many dates returned.

Kind regards,
Bill

Duc Thang TRAN · Answer

Hello @Faheem Mushreef

Working with free text fields is quite tricky because users can enter data in the wrong format.
However, if we assume that the data is correctly entered For exemple : it contains 'Date – 10/11/2025' in the description 
Here’s something I can suggest:

Use smart values (text functions) to extract this string, -> more info https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/jira-smart-values-text-fields/

either with "substringBetween", "after", etc., depending on your description format.

Then, use the smart value date function to convert it into a proper date. ->more info https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/jira-smart-values-date-and-time/

.ToDate("dd/MM/yyyy")

Here’s an example I use for a similar need and how to apply a log action to check the result.

1 - Create a variable {{a}} = {{issue.description.substringBetween("Date – ","'")}}

2 - edit due date = {{a.ToDate("dd/MM/yyyy")}}

Hope that helps

Trudy P Claspill · Answer

Hello @Faheem Mushreef

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

It will help us help you if you provide screen images of your complete rule, the details of the steps where you are using smart values, the audit log output, and the original value of the Description field you are using for testing.

I also recommend that you make use of the Log action to print to the audit log the original data and the smart values you are trying to use.