Creating an Automation Rule to Message about 'Rotting' Issues

Question

I am relatively new to Jira and to Jira Administration so I'm struggling to figure out how to create this automation I've thought up.

Essentially, I need to send scheduled reminders to issues approvers (identified in a custom Person field on the issue) a nudge when an issue has been in a specific column for more than 3 days (or so). I've been struggling to figure out how to structure the rule with criteria that narrow.

What I have so far is the Schedule Trigger (currently checking every two days) and then a {{smart.value}} condition IF component to narrow down to the specific Column I care about ({{issue.status}} Equals ' Column Status'). What I can't figure out is how to then narrow down to only the issue in that column older than 3 days- unless I've missed it, which is entirely possible, there doesn't seem to be an existing field that gives me that information?

Bill Sheboy · Answer

Hi @Samantha Copeland

I recommend starting with a JQL expression using the CHANGED operator to find the work items which are stalled in a particular status.

For example, this expression finds work items which have been "In Progress" for at least 3 days:

project = MYPROJECT
AND status = "In Progress"
AND NOT status CHANGED AFTER -3d
ORDER BY Key ASC

This could be refined further to check if your custom field has a value for the "approver" value.  With this JQL, you could save that as a filter and allow people to subscribe to it, or use the JQL in a rule to send reminders periodically.

Please consider the frequency of such reminders, as they may make matters worse by nagging people, and thus they start ignoring them.  So perhaps pair any reminders with discussions on root cause analysis to better understand why items are stalling.

One more thing: rules like this can get noisy, sending multiple emails to the same person.  To mitigate that, please see this Atlassian knowledgebase article on how to send a single email with a list of work items rather than one email for each.  The article discusses Assignees and that could be altered to use your custom field.

https://support.atlassian.com/automation/kb/automation-rule-to-send-single-email-for-all-issues-per-assignee-due-next/

Kind regards,
Bill