Automation rule to send a "Please Reply" email after 3 business days inactivity

Ryan Hormann

We are trying to setup an automation rule to send out an email at 8:00am to users if their ticket has sat with the status of "Waiting for User" for 3 business days with no activity. So, currently with the way we have it setup, the rule is running but not performing any actions even though when I validate the rule it doesn't state that no tickets currently match.

 

I also have another concern that the rule is going by calendar days instead of business days and so these emails will be sent out over the weekend.

 

Also I want this rule to trigger once at the [3-5) day mark. So when it runs at 8:00am, any ticket that is over 3 days inactive and under 5 days inactive will get an email sent (unless there is a better trigger for this rule).

 

This is what I currently have setup for an automation rule:

Bill Sheboy

Hi @Ryan Hormann 

Short answer: There is no built-in JQL feature to allow comparing business days, only calendar days.  Thus, an alternative is to use two rules: one saves the date / time in a custom field when a work item transitions to "Waiting for User", and a scheduled trigger rule which can use the date / time diff() function for a business days comparison.  And, there are also some problems with the rule you show, so please see below for those.

 

For the rule you show, it uses a scheduled trigger with JQL, and by default, this option is enabled: Only include work items that have changed since the last time this rule executed.  That means the rule will not repeatedly check items which have already been processed.  But, that may not work for your scenario because the rule will use date / time functions and not JQL to check for the elapsed business days.

Next, your trigger JQL checks for status = "Waiting for User", but then the rule later has conditions which always pass: the checks on status of Resolved and Cancelled.  Are you checking what you wanted with those, or did you instead want to check the Resolution field?

Finally, you likely only want to send the reminder once (or a limited) number of times.  Please consider how you want to track that in the work item to prevent repeated reminders to the person.

 

Kind regards,
Bill

 

UPDATE: There is another automation approach which does not require adding the custom field or second rule to set it: using the REST API to read the changelog entries.  If it turns out that is needed for this question, please read later posts to learn more.  Thank you!