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How to automate issue description update in multiple spaces

Rob Peters_fk1coj

Hello Community,

I am looking for a solution for the following situation:

We create for each customer project a own Jira space. This is an empty space with the right setting/schemes using Jira Automation (REST API). The empty space is then filled with a default project structure (a set of 60+ work items in a specific hierarchy) using Templating.app. At the moment we have 20 customer space, but this will soon grown towards +200 space. Each of them is created based on the default project structure.

What i want to achieve is that a admin is able to centrally update the description of a specific work item in all +200 spaces (all these +200 space will have that specific work items). I already discovered that bulk edit doesn't work on the work item description. I prefer to solve it in Jira automation without using any third party apps.

In short I want to deploy an updated description text to all spaces, to all work items which mean the criteria.

Thanks.

Accepted answers

All comments

Trudy P Claspill

Hello @Rob Peters

Here are some things to consider in your desired solution.

To have a single rule that affects multiple Spaces your rule will have to be created by a Jira admin. And the Actor of the rule will need to have sufficient permissions in the affected Spaces to edit the Description in all affected items.

If you want the rule to be run on-demand it will either have to be a Scheduled rule that only a Jira admin would be able to access to run on-demand, or it would have to be a manually triggered rule that could be triggered from a work item.

What is the criteria for selecting the items to be updated in the +200 spaces? Will this change from one run to the next? If so, the person executing the rule will need to be able to edit the rule, or the rule would need to be manually triggered with a prompt to ask the user to provide the JQL to select the work items to modify.

There are limitations on how many items can be processed in a rule. Refer to

https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/automation-service-limits/

If the items are selected by a JQL in a Scheduled trigger than up to 999 items can be processed in a single run. If you anticipate needing to update more than that many items you would need to factor in a way to track which items were already updated so that they would be skipped in the next run of the rule.

If the rule is triggered manually then the items would need to be retrieved by a Lookup Work Items action, and that is limited to retrieving no more than 100.

Which type of admin are you referring to when you say you want "a admin" to be able to do this? Are you talking about a Jira admin or a Space admin?

What type of update will need to be made?

Does the Description currently contain text that is formatted in any way, contain images, links, etc. or is it just plain text?
Will the "update" be an entire replacement of the existing text? Or are you wanting to present the existing text to the user to have them modify it, then apply that to the targeting items?

Trudy P Claspill

I may have an incorrect statement in my original reply.

Where I said a manually triggered rule would have to use a Lookup Work Items action to lookup the issues (via JQL) to modify, that may not be the only method available.

It might be possible to use a branch: For Each > Related items > JQL

The JQL for selecting the issues to be changed would be supplied.

I think with that method you could get up to 999 items.

Alex Ortiz

@Rob Peters

Try doing this wild, but crazy workaround that should work for you.

https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Jira-questions/Bulk-Change-Description-Field/qaq-p/897762

Trudy P Claspill

The one from Vincent, nested within Mohamed Riza's response thread?

That is an intriguing workaround.

If the +200 projects share a workflow scheme it could be manageable. If they do not, then the change would need to be incorporated into the existing Spaces' workflows and into whatever is being used to create the new Spaces.

Alex Ortiz

There were a few options in there, but Vincents was the one I tried and confirmed worked.

Rob Peters_fk1coj

Hi Trudy,

Thank you for your reply!

I am one of the organization admins within our company, so permission will not be an issue. In our situation a manual trigger would work the best, since we only have to need to update occasionally. The search criteria should be flexible but will be always based on the item summary. It would be great if input could be given using a prompt but if to complex or not possible a manually interaction if fine (it already saves a lot time and reduces the risk of errors).

I want to replace the entire description for a new description, the new description will be combination of text and a link (to Confluence).

Rob Peters_fk1coj

Hi Alex,

Thanks for your reply.

I will look at the proposed solution.

@Trudy P Claspillall spaces share the same workflow.

@Alex Ortiz love your Youtube Channel, helped me a lot :-) !

Trudy P Claspill

I was correct that Lookup Issues action is limited to 100 issues, so if you anticipate needing to edit more than 100 issues you will have to use a branch.

If this is built as a manual issue then when it is triggered from an issue that issue itself will be excluded from the updates. You would need an extra action to edit the trigger issue also.

Would you be triggering this (manually) from an issue that you also want to update?

Would the set of issues to be updated all have the same Summary as the trigger issue? Would it be a full match, or does your issue creation process add some project-specific text to the templated Summary? Would the summary of a given issue ever also be part of a summary of an issue you don't want to update? i.e.

Summary of issue #1: "Build a house"

Summary of issue #2: "Build a house with two stories"

...where you want to change the issues that have their Summary set to just "Build a house"?

The basic rule would be something like this:

Screenshot 2026-01-27 at 3.38.14 PM.png

This rule prompts for the JQL you want to use to select the issues to update, and the new text you want for Description.

Screenshot 2026-01-27 at 3.44.08 PM.png

It will do a full exact match on the Summary field when the JQL is entered as shown above. And here is the result.

Screenshot 2026-01-27 at 3.45.05 PM.png

There are additional nuances to considered as I mentioned above. If you want to trigger the rule from an issue you want to include in the update set, the rule needs an Edit action outside of the branch to edit the trigger issue. If the trigger issue summary is an exact match for all the issues you want to change, and you don't want to add any other criteria, then you don't need to prompt for the JQL.

The rule will have to be multi-project scoped. You'll need to consider if you want it to be Globally scoped or if you want to explicitly specify the target projects in the scope.

I would also consider if you want to exclude from the change set issue that are already completed or in other statuses that should preclude a change to the Description.

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