New to Jira Automation - goodbye Cron (sort of), hello new project created trigger, new additions to

[#1]

Hey Everyone!

Simeon from the Automation team here. I'm delighted to share some new features and improvements that we are shipping to Jira automation (Cloud only).

Firstly, @Sam Harding has already written about our newest improvement: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Automation-articles/Branching-over-smart-values-in-Jira-Automation/ba-p/1741935#M448 so take a peek at that if branching is your thing. Otherwise, read on for more.

So, what is new?

Well, there are four things to tell you about.

• Goodbye CRON in scheduled trigger - new interface

• New ‘Project created’ trigger

• Support for date & date time fields in the Issue Condition

• ‘Comment edited’ trigger / ‘Edit comment’ action

Some have been out for a little while and some are brand new shiny improvements and features. Let’s start with our old friend ‘CRON’.

Scheduled Trigger - goodbye CRON

Up until now, if you wanted to get more granular with your scheduled rules, you would have to use a CRON expression. For those who don’t know what CRON is, count yourself lucky. Like Darth Vader, it is very powerful but ugly. It allows you to choose exact times to schedule rules by constructing an ‘expression.’ For example, 0 15 8 ? DEC MON 2021 = 8:15am on every Monday during December of 2021

We have made updates to the scheduled trigger so you can enjoy the power of CRON without needing to know CRON. The screenshot below describes it better than my words can. Just point and click.

Big props to @[deleted] for pulling this off, it wasn’t an easy job! This has been out in the wild for a little while so there is a good chance you’ve already seen this. If you have a rule that was setup with the old design then there will be an option for you to upgrade your rule to the new design.

Project Created Trigger

This one is for all those Agile Admin and DevOps folks out there! There isn’t really too much to say about this one, it allows you to trigger an automation rule when a project is created. You can specify the project.

One important fact to note about this trigger is that it is only available for global rules by design, which makes sense when you think about it since it wouldn’t ever trigger if it was scoped to a particular project. It does have the ability to filter executions down to a project type and you can access the created project via the {{project}} smart value.

Issue Condition - Support for Date & Date Time fields

Now this one is close to my heart as the ‘Issue Condition’ has been my baby since we first launched it. Better again, it doesn’t keep me awake all night like my real baby. We’ve added support for comparing date and date time fields to the condition! We spent a while designing this and took some inspiration from the new Scheduled Trigger we mentioned before. Again, the goal is always to remove blockers so you or any project admin in your org can create automation rules without prior experience.

As you can see we’ve had to depart from the UX by adding some extra tabs. We felt this was the right direction to do so that the experience wasn’t too cluttered.

You now have the power to make comparisons against a certain time frame, such as 2 days ago, or against a date or time, such as 9:00 AM. The ability to compare against another field of the same type is also available as we do for other fields.

This change is rolling out right now, coming to a Jira Cloud instance near you shortly! Oh, one thing to note is that it isn’t possible currently to compare a Date to a Date time (or vice versa). There will be some coming updates to this so keep your eyes peeled!

Comment Edited trigger

We’ve shipped a new trigger for when a comment has been edited. That pretty much says it all!

Edit Comment Action

Last but definitely not least, we come to the new action ‘Edit Comment’! The design for this has a bit more going on than the trigger. This action will, as the title suggests, edit a comment.

As you can see, there are few options provided that will make it a lot easier to find the comment that you want to edit without having to resort to smart values though we’ve provided that option as well.

Where can I find out more about these?

That’s a fantastic question, you can find out more in our docs for these:

• Scheduled trigger

• Issue comment edited trigger

• Project created trigger

• Project smart values

• Issue fields condition

• Edit comment action

On behalf of the whole team we hope that you get some great value out of these and stay tuned for more!

Cheers,

Simmo.

[Curt Holley]

These are all great new features....particularly the CRONless schedule for someone in the southern hemisphere/NZ time zone.

[Taranjeet Singh]

Thanks for sharing these new Jira Automation features, @Simmo !

[Kristin Lyons]

I love the move away from CRON :)

[Mykenna Cepek]

But ... I'm the only admin here who understands cron (lots of prior unix experience).

Now anyone can do this -- I'm obsolete!  Boo hoo :cry:

[Rudy Holtkamp]

Hi @Simmo , I'm really happy about the advanced branching feature!

I do have a question about the project created trigger: will it be possible to copy automation rules to the newly created project? If you have for instance three different kind of projects where you always apply a set of default automation rules (which can be altered by the project admins) it would be helpful if we can use the project created trigger to copy the correct set of rules to that project.

Thanks,

Rudy

[Tobias Maierhofer]

Nice, really looking forward to these new features, especially the project created trigger!

[Mykenna Cepek]

Indeed! I'm already using the new Project Created trigger. Will help us stay aligned with our best practices, and keep me in the loop about significant activity in our instance that I might not otherwise know about.

[Simmo]

Hey @Rudy Holtkamp

I'm afraid that we're not at the level of Automating ourselves yet! :D So I'm afraid you won't be able to copy Automation rules from Automation rules.

[Rudy Holtkamp]

Thanks @Simmo for your response, I guess you can see my comment as a feature request ;-) .

[Simmo]

Hey @Rudy Holtkamp,

Noted :) I've pointed it out to our PM. What you described is not to dissimilar to other features we've discussed.

Cheers mate. 

[Kevin Steen]

"project created" is a great addition! Now being able to launch other automations from this, i get to eliminate some work arounds!

[Chris Buzon]

I have found that just getting a DM sent to me when a new project is created has been AMAZING.  We have a complicated JIRA landscape, and almost without fail I can prevent a lot of lost work by talking to the person who made the project. 

More than half of them should not have created a new project, and quickly realize they're in over their heads.  It's a huge time saver.

[Peter Radenciuc]

I also can’t wait to see what the new “project created trigger” can do. 👌

👋🏻 @Tobi Maierhofer 

[Dave F]

Given the growing value that the Advanced Roadmaps place on of having a consistent project and board(s) setup, will the Project Created trigger be able to set schemes or copy them from another project (like a template project), create boards, etc.? Those would be very handy along with the copy automations from other projects as suggested by Rudy above.

[Dave F]

And now also Jira Align, which looks like the Agile Program Management I've done before, which I assume will also have specific conditions for it to work as seamlessly as it does in the demo videos. Knowing those config conditions in advance would save many frustrating hours of trial and error in a growing complexity of config options