How do I create three start/create transitions for one Jira space?

Liza Gonzalez_shnn7h

I'm creating three team boards within one Jira space for a client. I am having issues with the automation rule that would transition a new Jira work item to the specific team board. But it isn't working because each team board has a different starting stage. I tried to create a Rovo agent but that didn't work. The workflow is below, I drew the yellow lines to show the two additional starting points. This is a Jira cloud software project.

 

Sami Shaik

Hello @Liza Gonzalez , 

@Ajay _view26_ shape is the right one (one create transition, one initial status, a rule that routes), so let me go straight to why that rule usually fails, because "it isn't working" with that design has two common causes and both are silent.

1. The rule runs before the team field exists. A "Work item created" trigger fires the instant the item is created, and if the team is set by the create screen, a form, or a second rule, the routing rule reads the field a fraction of a second too early, sees it empty, and matches nothing. The fix is one component: add Re-fetch work item data as the first action after the trigger, so the rule reads the item as it is now. Atlassian documents this exact race in the trigger's notes; it is the most common reason a created-trigger rule "does nothing" in the audit log.

2. The transition does not exist from the initial status. The Transition action can only follow a transition that the workflow allows from the item's current status. If your initial status only has a transition to one place, the rule fails with "no transition found" for the other two teams. Check the workflow: either add a global transition to each team's starting status (any status can reach it), or three specific transitions out of the initial status. Then the rule's transition action will find them.

The design that needs no rule. Boards do not care which status an item started in; they care which column a status sits in. Keep a single initial status, and on each of the three boards put that status in the first column alongside the team's own starting status. Filter each board by the team field (or component, or label). New items land in the right board's first column on day one, the team drags them into their own starting status when they pick them up, and there is no rule to race, no transition to add, and nothing that breaks when a fourth team arrives. The only cost is one shared status appearing in three boards' first columns, which most teams stop noticing after a week.

I would reach for the rule only if the team's starting status carries a business meaning that must be set on creation (an SLA that starts there, an approval that waits there). If it is just where the team's work begins, the column mapping is the cleaner answer.

Not a Rovo agent job, by the way: this is deterministic routing, and an agent adds a probabilistic step to something a rule or a column mapping does exactly.