📣 A new look for the Rule Builder for Automation is coming soon ⚡️

[#1]

Hey Community 👋, Simon Chan from Automation Platform here.

I am stoked to be announcing that a new look for the Rule Builder for Automation will start rolling out this week. Becoming generally available later this year, the new Rule Builder has all the same functionality, but gets a fresh new look that makes it easier to use. And it's all thanks to your feedback! So let’s dive in and get you across all the details.

1️⃣ More space for your rule flow

Whether you’re a seasoned Automation pro or just getting started, we’ve made it easier to create and edit your rules. By making the rule flow the star of the show, you can see and understand everything that’s happening in a rule. Just like in the current rule builder, you can add components sequentially via the ‘Add component’ button, or add them in-between existing components by clicking. If you’ve already configured your components, you can drag and drop to reorder the steps in your rule.

2️⃣ Less scrolling and better branching

Component details has now moved into the right side bar, and it’s now always visible. No matter how many components your rule has, it always will be there by your side, so you don’t have to scroll up and down the entire page to know if you’re editing the right component in a long rule. We’ve also given branching a refresh, with lines to make it clear where a if/else or branch occurs in your rule flow.

3️⃣ Everything you need, in one place

We’ve heard that it’s easy to forget to save a rule, and then changes are lost. To make it easier, we’ve placed the Turn on rule and Update (shown when editing an existing rule) buttons on the top right of the rule builder. They’re always there so if you have to run to a meeting mid-edit you can easily hit Update to make sure your work is saved. You’ll also find the Audit Log, Rule Details, and options to toggle rules on or off in the same place.

When will the new look Rule Builder be available?

The new look Rule Builder will start gradually rolling out today across Jira, Confluence, Jira Service Management and Jira Work Management to all editions where Automation is currently available. We expect the rollout to be complete and for the new look Rule Builder to be available in all products by the end of this calendar year.

We want to hear from you

Before we sign off, thank you for sharing your feedback here in the Community and for getting on calls with us to share your experiences with Automation. We hope you’ll love the new look Rule Builder. If you have questions or want to share your thoughts, drop a comment below, jump on a call with us or share feedback directly from within the new look Rule Builder.

[Dan Tombs]

Great to see these improvements come to fruition. Seeing the rule flow larger and with clearer lines should really help debug any errors we see.

[Tomislav Tobijas]

Looking great! 🤩

Just to confirm, this refreshed look will also be available for Automation for Jira? (just asking as screenshots show Confluence automation, but by the looks of the article labels, this should also apply to Jira).

[Simon Chan]

Hey @Tomislav Tobijas 
Thanks for the feedback! Yes, confirming that the refreshed look will be coming to Automation for Jira (Jira Software, Jira Service Management & Jira Work Management) too!

[Hana Kučerová]

Nice, thank you!

[Haddon Fisher]

Got this UI recently in my personal instance, and have a lot of mixed feelings.

The pure usability changes do feel like an improvement; rearranging the save\publish buttons and moving the components section feel like a good changes and the click-and-drag also feels much smoother. Visually, I really like that the branching is more obvious.

Unfortunately there's a lot to not like as well. The biggest one I see off the top of my head is the new component edit screen, which is much smaller. This is the most important screen in the majority of Automation use-cases, so making it so much worse for so little gain is not a choice I understand, given the amount of whitespace surrounding the components now. Even some of the wins are only partial; while the branching visuals are improved for the purple components, it wasn't extended to the "If\Then\Else" condition, which now has an even odder look.

The last piece of feedback I want to give is becoming a bit of a broken record at this point but...are UI improvements really the best use of your time right now? Even if you zoom into just the Automation piece, the visual interface is good enough that you've rolled out changes to get us to use it less, and it's not like there aren't a ton of feature requests, bug fixes, and enhancements people have been asking for. Putting all of that aside, "UI change fatigue" is a real thing whose credit line been overextended for a while now.

Signed up for a session, so talk to you soon!

[Simon Chan]

Hey @Haddon Fisher, first off thanks for taking the time to share your feedback with us and looking forward to catching up with you next week.

On the component edit screen, we hear you and have received similar feedback from some other customers and will be rolling out changes to make it wider shortly - would love to know if the changes help once you've been able to use them. More broadly, we've made these changes primarily as we saw increased feedback around the core usability of the rule builder, but also to set us up to deliver future updates to allow creation of more complex rules. We are also working to broadly make performance enhancements across the board and address bugs more swiftly, but I do understand how it may appear in light of the packaging model changes.

[Haddon Fisher]

Hi Simon Chan, thanks for the quick reply and glad to hear the component window is getting attention ASAP. Any idea when I'll see it hit the wild?

I definitely understand wanting to make changes to the UI as you set yourselves up for future improvements and it's not my place to tell you how to do Product. It's also possible that I am the one lone nut in a sea of happy people. However that lone nut's well of tolerance for small and not-overly-valuable UI changes in Jira went dry a couple years ago; the fact that we keep getting these instead of what is actually asked for is salt on the wound, and that's before we get into choices like the packaging model changes.

Anyway, thanks again for the quick reply and talk to you soon!