Jira Free Plan - Automation Usage shows 1,968 steps but Billing shows only 1.27K used. How can I ide

timothytang

I'm using Jira Service Management on the Free Plan and I'm trying to understand how Automation Steps are calculated.

Currently, our Automation Usage page shows approximately 1,968 automation steps used this month.

However, the Billing page shows:

- Monthly allowance: 1,400
- Allowance used: 1.27K
- Allowance remaining: 134

This is confusing because the numbers do not appear to match.

I only have two enabled automation rules in this service project.

Rule 1: Prompt customer for comment for 3 days

Trigger:
- Scheduled (daily at 9:00 PM)

JQL:
- status = "DELIVERED" and updated <= -3d

Action:
- Add a customer-visible comment
- "Prevent duplicates by only adding this comment once to a particular work item" is enabled

Statistics:
- Execution count: 30
- Success: 30
- Average execution time: 134.3 seconds

Rule 2: Notify Approver - Dummy Contract

Trigger:
- Work item created

Conditions:
- Issue Type = Dummy Contract
- Status = Waiting for approval

Action:
- Edit work item fields
- Add request participants

Statistics:
- Execution count: 122
- Success: 6
- No actions: 116

Given the relatively simple nature of these two rules, I am surprised to see approximately 1,968 automation steps used in a month.

My questions are:

1. Why does Automation Usage show about 1,968 steps while Billing only shows 1.27K steps used?
2. How are automation steps calculated for a scheduled rule that runs a JQL search and comments on matching issues?
3. Does each issue returned by the JQL count as additional steps?
4. Is there a way to determine which specific automation rule is consuming the most steps?
5. Could there be organization-level or project-level automation usage that is not obvious from the project automation report?
6. When the monthly automation allowance is exhausted on the Free Plan, what functionality stops working?
7. Are Jira Service Management customer notifications affected, or only Automation rules?

Thank you for any clarification.

Matthew Sinclair

Couple of things to prime with:

A: The site level meters appears to be an "Educated" guess - as we're seeing mismatches on our org - but we also have 15-20 sites - and a 52 million step allowance (split between Service Collection,Teamwork Collection and a couple of instances of JPD). (you read that right - yes we're enterprise). I'm waiting on feedback from a contact who went to Teams 26 to clear that up - hopefully the site level meters will line up better. Still pending.

B: A often overlooked "rule" in the new usage meters - If you have a rule that is triggered by "Created issue" - fails conditions to act in said trigger - that still costs 1 step per trigger! This means even if the rule doesn't fire - it does in-fact - fire anyway. So if you moved 200 tickets that day - and only 20 executed action - you still burned 200 steps that day - not including the 20 that did "more" than the trigger itself. (It's in the fine print - a failed trigger is still a step) This is why I've started warning automation users to ensure their triggers have a gate - better to burn 1 step - not 3-5 steps on a failed conditional. My strongest recommendations are:
-Avoid Global rules
-All triggers should have conditional gates on them
-Narrow Scope as much as possible
-Be efficient - don't waste steps on frivolous things - audit logs/etc.
-Know your tool - don't automate things you don't need to automate.
-Weigh your options - "Rovo Nodes" burn credits - not Automation steps. Which is better?

As to your questions that I didn't infer/touch on.

1. See my first point.
2. Each "bubble" on your automation grid is a "Step". If that bubble is a branch/for loop - each iteration - is a step burned. So if you have a branching node that is responding to 100 tickets JQL'ed - its 100 steps minimum burned. Hopefully that gives you enough of an idea of what your doing. (Note: If your looping a list in a single comment node via smart values - that's just 1 step. - It's the branching nodes that will cost more.)
3. See previous note. Depends on the context using the JQL.
4. Jira-Admin Panel (Clock work gear next to your profile icon top right corner → System → Global Automation → Usage Tab.) This will display the current steps eaten up in the site level - who owns and link the the rule itself.
5. Yet to be determined with current tools (my initial first 2 points) - the trap to be aware of is each "Collection" has its own allowance rules. Teamwork vs Service Collections. Also Jira Product Discovery has its own private pool - these 3 overall items DO NOT SHARE allowance. Different pools for different apps/families.
6. Depending on your billing setup - if you run out - it just stops cold until reset. Unless you enable "added usage" or something - its like a cell phone plan - either you run out of data - or your billed for more data.
7. The best answer I can give you is anything Automation is doing - costs steps. Anything Rovo is doing - costs credits (excluding the virtual agent provided with JSM). In simple terms Customer Notifications are not included. If your doubting this - I would advise cutting your email traffic out of Automation - bare minimum/necessities - no more than that. Anyone who is a Watcher/Request Participant/Customer/Assignee - will get email pings whenever a ticket moves. Comments are a cheap way to get email notices off of. Automation is overkill at that point. You could also alternatively employ Workflows + Event Handlers to exploit the Notification Scheme to do things that don't require Automation.

Sources:

https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/how-is-my-usage-calculated/

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-cloud-administration/docs/configure-notification-schemes/

Hope all the above helps!