Manual Jira Automation: Run rule on multiple selected issues from a board?

Question

Question

I’m trying to understand whether Jira Automation supports running a manual automation rule on multiple selected issues from a board.

What works:

* I can create a Manual trigger automation rule.

* I can run that rule on a single issue.

* On a board, I can multi-select issues and I do see “Run automation” as an action.

What doesn’t work:

* When configuring the automation rule, I do not see any option to run the rule on selected issues.

* Specifically, I do not see a branch option like “Issues selected in manual trigger” (only “Current issue”, “Parent”, etc.).

What I’ve already tried:

* Project-scoped (not global) automation

* Company-managed projects

* Manual trigger added before branching

* Adding a Branch rule / related issues

* Running the rule from a board and issue navigator

* Verified admin permissions

My question:

* Is it actually possible in Jira Cloud today to configure a manual automation rule that runs against multiple issues selected on a board?

* Or is the “Run automation” board action limited to single-issue context, with no true multi-issue support in Automation?

If this is not supported:

* Is Bulk Change the only supported alternative?

* Has this capability been deprecated or tenant-restricted?

Looking for confirmation of current product behavior, not workarounds unless that’s the only option.

Bill Sheboy · Answer

Hi @Todd -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

What problem are you trying to solve by selecting multiple work items and running the rule?  Knowing that may help the community suggest alternatives.

Until we know that...

The current Manual Trigger can only be run for the single, selected work item.  This can be observed when selecting multiple items and then trying to run the rule from the ... menu where it is then grayed out for selection.

There is an open suggestion to add a Work Item Selection field to the user options for the trigger: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/AUTO-744

A workaround with the manual trigger is to provide a text, user input field and ask people to type in the keys...although that is likely to be error prone.

Kind regards,
Bill

Trudy P Claspill · Answer

Hello @Todd

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

It is not supported to select multiple issues through the UI and then trigger an Automation rule manually to run against all the issues.

Automation rules can run against multiple issues, but the issues must be selected by some step contained within the rule. If there is some standard you can define for selecting the issues that you can specify within a Filter, there are different ways to use such a filter within a rule to select the issues and operate against each one.

Otherwise the Bulk Change operation is one alternative you can use.