Automation - send email if work item created between 4PM and 8AM does not work

Jagoda Zawadzka_dnhlla

Hi all,

 

I have made an automation that should send emails to specified addresses whenever a work item (that is not a Subtask) is created between 4PM and 8AM.

This is how the setup looks:

 

When: work item created

Conditions applied: Issue Type does not equal Subtask

 

If: Compare two values

First value* (required): {{issue.created.format("H")}}

Condition

greater than

Second value: 16

Then: Send Email

[To, Subject and Content are populated correctly]

If: Compare two values

First value* (required): {{issue.created.format("H")}}

Condition

less than

Second value: 8

Then: Send Email

[To, Subject and Content are populated correctly]

This doesn't seem to work.

My customer who usually opens cases in between those hours is from Singapore (=a very different timezone). Might this be the reason?

If not, does anybody have any ideas as to how to make it work?

I'll apreciate any help!

Thank you

Jagoda

[Edit: I'm trying to format my message to look nicer but it doesn't save my changes, apologies]

Bill Sheboy

Hi @Jagoda Zawadzka 

First, I recommend continuing to use {{issue.created}} in your expressions: that will be when Jira created the work item as opposed to {{now}} which is when the rule eventually runs.  During Atlassian outages and problems with rule slow downs, the values will definitely be different: now will be after created.

Next, your expression is using format("H"), which converts the date / time into text.  Thus, the greater than / less than checks you are using with the Smart Values Condition will compare text, and not numbers, leading to unexpected results.

Finally, I can think of several ways to do what you ask:

• Use a math expression with Boolean operators to keep everything as numbers to test within the range of values
• When converting to text with format("H"), use a match() function with a regular expression to check the hour as text exactly matches your possible range values.
• Use additional variables, or placeholder values for compare with date / time functions of isAfter() and isBefore(), such as adjusting {{now}} to yesterday at 1600 and today at 0800 for the comparisons.  I recommend not using this approach: it is prone to simple errors and I have observed both of those functions in rules produce incorrect results.

 

Kind regards,
Bill