You can now run automation rules as a human in Jira Cloud

[#1]

Hello world,

Simeon here, one of the engineers from the Jira Cloud Automation team.

I am happy to report that in the battle between humans and robots, humans have ultimately been victorious. Customers have long requested the ability to change the default rule actor for Jira Automation. Now you can!

Project admins will now be able to set themselves as a rule actor and global admins will be able to set anyone they like (or the triggering user) as rule actor.

Why would you do that?

Customers have requested this feature for a ton of reasons including:

• To create issue on behalf of a user

• To log work as a particular individual.

• To auto-respond to tickets as a real person rather than the default ‘Automation for Jira’

How do I do it?

Choose any Jira automation rule and pop into the ‘rule details’ section. Previously we told you who the actor was set to but now you can select a user. Below is an example of what a global administrator would see from my Jira instance. I could leave it as the default ‘Automation for Jira’ or change it to myself or a colleague.

Does this mean I can create automation rules that will fire under Shakira’s name?

Not unless you are a Global Admin. We must protect Shakira’s good name. As ever, we want to put the power back in the hands of project admins so there isn’t always the bottleneck of one person to get things done. However, there needs to be guardrails.

Project Admins can set only themselves as the rule actor. The Global Admin retains the power and can set anyone in the org as the rule actor.

Tell us what you think

I enjoyed building this feature but the real test is how it does in the wild. Let me know if it solves problems for you or any areas of improvement.

There are a few Jira instances that we’re still getting the necessary information from in order to be able to offer this functionality. If you can’t see it, please wait a week and if it is still not there get in touch with support!

Happy automating!

Simeon

[Kimi Nakashima]

@Simmo Is this something that changed only for cloud or has this change been implemented for server as well? We're on version 7.1.16 of Automation for Jira.

[Simmo]

Hey @Kimi Nakashima ,

I've updated the post to be a bit clearer. This is only for Jira Cloud. From what I can remember this has already been available in the server version for quite a while.

Cheers,

Simeon.

[MS]

@Simmo Would this pass the rule actor as the author of Slack messages sent through automation instead of "Automation for Jira"?

[Simmo]

Hey @Massis Shahmirian , I'm afraid not. They'll still be "Automation for Jira".

[Rosa M Fossi]

@Massis Shahmirian  If you're using a webhook for the JIRA-to-slack message, you should be able to edit how the message appears in slack (key word... appears. The actor is still Automation for Jira).

This is what one of my integrations/automation messages looks like our cs-urgent channel. 

This is the slack webhook config screen:

[David Washburn]

@Simmo does this include Jira Service Desk comments (both public and internal)? For example, can an automation rule look like it's responding to a ticket as a user?

[Hilmar Everts]

@Simmo : I would prefer to be able to set the rule actor to the person who made the triggering change in the issue. Is that going to be the next feature? :-)

[Jasper Hovenga]

@Simmo We have some automations for Jira SD where we send the Issue reporter a message (public comment). In that case, we would like to send the message in name of the assignee. Will that be possible anytime soon?

[Simmo]

Hey all!

@David Washburn, it does indeed include JSD comments :)

@Hilmar Everts, unless I've misunderstood you, that option is included. When choosing the actor you can choose the option "User that trigged the event". This will then set the actor to whoever created/edited/commented, etc.

@Jasper Hovenga, if I understand you correctly you'd essentially like smart value support so you can source the actor from a field on the issue? I'm afraid that isn't included. We've got an improvement around that which we are tracking.

Cheers!

[Jasper Hovenga]

@Simmo That's exactly what we need! At this point, a reminder to the customer ("you didn't reply on the ticket") is send from the "Automation for Jira" user. So the improvement is much needed for us :)

Greetz

[David Washburn]

@Jasper Hovenga I can confirm this works, I'm doing it in a live environment between two service desks. It works for internal comments and external comments, as long as the employee has agent access to the service desk the automation rule is running from.

[Jasper Hovenga]

@David Washburn Do you mean i can select the agent as the actor to send the (public) comment? The agents all have access to the service desk :)

[Hilmar Everts]

Hi @Simmo, I tried that in my multi-project rule, but the actor reverts to the Jira automation user when the rule is actually run. I suppose it might be the security restrictions mentioned below? If yes, how can that be circumvented or solved?

[Simmo]

Hey @Hilmar Everts,

That wording might need a bit of updating. The underlying restrictions here are that we cannot impersonate other Connect addon users and we cannot impersonate Atlassian support stuff that you have granted temporary access to your site for support reasons (their permission set is too high).

The other reason that we might fall back to the A4J user is that we cannot figure out who the user is. What is the trigger for your rule? It might be best to ask this in a separate community question or raise a support ticket.

When I build this we wanted to make sure that your rules still run so if we have trouble figuring out the user or we cannot impersonate them we run as the A4J user rather than just failing :)

[Jasper Hovenga]

@David Washburn

@Simmo 

This is the problem: I send a public comment when the issue issn't updated for 7 days. So there issn't a "actor who triggered  the event". The automation rule triggered it. I would like to select "assignee" as the actor.

[Simmo]

Hi @Jasper Hovenga,

I'm afraid that will be in the next set of changes. That is apart of https://codebarrel.atlassian.net/browse/AUT-97

It isn't supported yet.

Cheers,

Simeon.

[Jasper Hovenga]

@Simmo i will follow AUT097 then :) Thanks again for the reply.