Automation to send email when story has been in a column (Status) for 24 hours (business days only).

[Patrick Parson]

I am trying to write an automation to send an email to the Assignee if the story has been in a certain column (Status) for 24 hours.  I am using Kanban for a workflow and I want to put some controls on it.  Does anyone have an example?  

[Bill Sheboy · Accepted solution]

Hi @Patrick Parson -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

What problem are you trying to solve by doing this?  Knowing that will help the community provide better suggestions.  Thanks!

Until we have that info...

What you ask is not possible with out-of-the-box features...

• If you have a marketplace addon for JQL it might be possible to create a rule with a scheduled trigger using the enhanced JQL
• Without that, you could add a custom field which is set every time an issue transitions to an in-progress status using an automation rule.  Then a second rule could perform a diff on the date times using business days to help detect the condition.

Kind regards,
Bill

[Patrick Parson]

Hello @Bill Sheboy .  Thanks for your reply.

The team using this will be processing requests that come into their queue.  Each request (Jira Story) has to go through six steps in a workflow and the request has to be completed in ten business days.  The Kanban board I set up has a column (and associated Status) for each step in the workflow.  To get them done in ten days, they have to move through the workflow in a pre-determined rhythm (we can always adjust that as we learn more about the process).  If a request is still in a column __ hours after it moved into the column, it is running late, and the Assignee should be informed.  The solution I am pursuing would be to send an alert (email or Teams chat?) to the Assignee, but I am open to other possibilities.  Bottom line is that we want these items to get done in ten business days,  I am using Stories with no sub-tasks.  The users of this Kanban board will be new to Jira, and I want to make it as simple for them as possible.  We will ask them to drag and drop the stories into the next column as they move across the board, rather than advancing the story w/the Status button from within the story.  I'm sure we will also want to measure how quickly stories are moving through the workflow...where they are getting hung up, etc.   Hope that helps.  Does that change your answer at all?

[Bill Sheboy]

Thanks for that information, Patrick!

As the team appears to be regularly using the Kanban board, what do you think about making the delay visible on the board, using either card colors or a quick filter?  You could use this JQL to detect for all days, not just business days:

project = myProjectName AND NOT status CHANGED AFTER -24h AND statusCategory = "In Progress"

As the team is regularly viewing the board the business days distinction may not be as important as long as the delays are visible.  And if you still want business days, the automation rule I described using the custom field could help.

Regarding flow tracking, you could start with the built-in control chart to see that.  It does have some limitations, and so if you need something better you could investigate marketplace addons for better cycle time measures.

[Patrick Parson]

Thanks Bill.  I set up a QF and I think that should work.