Add {{agentResponse}} on branched item as comment to trigger issue

Question

I'm having trouble updating a trigger issue based on actions in a branch. The rule workflow I've established is:

* When an issue is created that has* Certain issue type
* Linked "relates to" work item

* Branch: For each linked item
* Use Rovo agent to draft summary based on content of linked item.
* Add {{agentResponse}} as comment to work item.

There's no option in the Add comment action to target {{triggerIssue}} so it ends up adding the content to the linked item because that's the context it's working under. I've also tried using Set Entity Property (Type: Issue, Property key: {{triggerIssue.comment.body}}, Property value: {{agentResponse}}) but it still tries to update the linked issue rather than the trigger issue.

Any ideas?

Cameron Paquette · Answer

Hey Bill,

Fair point. I work for a software company and was being perhaps too deliberately vague so as not to accidentally disclose something I shouldn't.

Basically, when a developer closes out an issue for an enhancement, it automatically spawns a Jira issue for a documentation task and relates the two work items. What I want the automation to do is, when that documentation issue is spawned, trigger the agent to draft a release note based on the contents of the development issue and add that release note as a comment to the documentation issue.

I'll look into those suggestions. Thank you!

Bill Sheboy · Answer

Hi @Cameron Paquette

First thing, what problem are you trying to solve by adding comments summarizing the linked work items?  That is, "why do this?"  Knowing that may help the community identify other options.  Adding comments this way seems like a brittle approach as both the linked items and comments could change independently...making them out of sync over time.

Until we know the "why"...

What you asked is not possible for the rule structure you described.

When the rule branches to the linked work items, each one becomes the "scope" for any rule actions, such as adding a comment.  Additionally, branches which could be over more-than-one-thing process in parallel and asynchronously, possibly causing collisions during the comment posting.  Regardless, the comments will certainly not be added in any predictable ordering.

For workaround ideas:

* Although I have not tried this, I wonder if rather than using branching, the agent prompt could be written to create the list of summaries for the linked work items...and then branch over that data to add each comment to the trigger one.  In this case, the scope remains the trigger work item to use the action.
* A possible workaround while keeping the branching you described is using the Send Web Request action to call the REST API endpoint to add the comment using JSON and the Atlassian Document Format (ADF).

Kind regards,
Bill