Jira automation comment on issue transitioned to "Done" when blocking issue is NOT "Done"

Ubaroz

I am looking for a way to have Jira Automation auto-comment on a work item, when it's transitioned to "Done", if it has at least one linked working item of the type "blocking".

Essentially, I want the user to be notified when they are trying to move forward a work item which has pre-conditions, based on the built-in "linked issue" functionality. So far, results have been touch and go with many false positives and negatives.

Here is my setup:

 

My needed automation logic:

IF

[Work item A] is transitioned to "Done"

AND

[Work item A] has a linked [work item B] blocking it (linked issue: "blocks")

AND

[Work item B] is NOT "Done"

Then

Comment on [Work item A] ("Attention!
This work item is blocked by another work item and should not be marked as "Done" until the blocking work item is completed first.")

The closest I got in way of answer to this was here:

https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Jira-questions/How-to-write-a-automation-rule-so-that-when-blocked-issue-is/qaq-p/2601468#U3228194

@Trudy Claspill apologies for resurrecting this, but this is the only place where I found a reference to what I am looking for, but lacking the practical next steps.

What you wrote there is exactly what I am trying to achieve:

"...If not, with an Automation rule you would be able to detect that Issue A was in a Done status while issue B was not, and you could get a notification about that"

 

It seems it should be quite simple to do, but I can't seem to find the proper way to make it work.

Any help is appreciated, thank you

Ubaroz

Trudy P Claspill

Hello @Ubaroz 

The first thing I recommend is removing the Conditions from the trigger. In my experience having conditions in the trigger has not proven to be consistently reliable.

So, let us start with a Work Item Transitioned trigger that has no conditions.

In your trigger you have set it to trigger when the item transitions to Done or In Progress.

But in your text you said the requirement is when an item transitions to Done. So remove the "in Progress" value from the To field in the trigger.

Next add a Condition after the trigger for you category IN  criteria

The next condition you specified is "if it has at least one linked working item of the type "blocking""

If you look at the Linked Issues section of the transitioning issue what would the relationship to the other issues show? What is the text pointed to by the arrow in my example, above the linked issues you want to consider in this condition?

That is the text you want to select in the Related Work Items Condition in the Link Types field.

 

Your requirement also says "has at least one" with no other parameters on the linked items. The exact match for that would be to use "is present"

 

But in your actual condition you set the Condition to  "all match specified JQL" and then set the JQL to "resolution != Done". So from this and your reference to the other Question I am inferring that the condition you want is 

"at least one linked issue of link type blocking exists and is not Done"

We need to define what you mean by "not Done". Do you want to check the Status value of the linked issue? Currently you are checking the Resolution value, which is not necessarily the same as the Status.

If checking the Resolution field is what you truly want to do, then my next question is about the Scope of your rule. Notice the Flow restricted to spaces section in my image above? Does that show when you configure the condition in your rule? Does the space list include all the spaces where [work item B] items might be located? Because this condition will consider only the linked items in the spaces named.

If you need to consider linked items in spaces besides the one that [work item A] is in then you need a multi-project scoped rule. Do you already have it configured for that? If not do you know how to do that or do you need an explanation?

After this condition you would have the step to comment on the original (work item A) issue.

If the rule and this condition are properly scoped, and you have split the conditions out of the Trigger as I recommended, test the rule and see if you get the correct results.

If you don't get the correct results then we need to dive deeper into the exact results you are getting and how they don't match your expectations.