automation is missing sprint-related actions

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi, community!

Has anyone else noticed that all the sprint-related actions seem to be missing from Jira Cloud, rule editors?  The triggers are still present.  I am seeing this in a free-license level, for company-managed and team-managed projects.

I checked the public backlog and do not see this as an open defect.

Thanks!

UPDATED 2024-01-30 -- Looks like they re-added the Create Sprint action, as of last week:
https://confluence.atlassian.com/cloud/blog/2024/01/atlassian-cloud-changes-jan-15-to-jan-22-2024

[Kevin Bui · Accepted solution]

Hey folks!

I handle the documentation and in-product content for Atlassian Automation. Just wanted to pop in and clear the air around what happened with these sprint actions. 

Long story short, this content was published by mistake.

Some time ago, we were working on sprint-related actions for Jira Cloud Automation - Create sprint, Start sprint, and Complete sprint. We had designs for these actions ready to go, and our dev team had started building them. At this point, I drafted the content and got it ready for publishing.

As is often the case, priorities changed - we had to stop working on the sprint actions, to focus on other projects. Months later, I published the content for the sprint actions by mistake while publishing something else.

This error managed to slip under my radar and remained undetected until last week, when AUTO-892 was raised. At that point, having realized what happened, I immediately removed all mention of the sprint actions from the docs.

So, in summary:

• The sprint actions (Create sprint, Start sprint, and Complete sprint) never existed in the product. 
• These actions did appear in our documentation, but this was by mistake.
• We don't have any components that are exclusive to the Enterprise plan.

I'm really sorry for all the confusion caused by my goof-up - this is completely my mistake. I hope this comment clears things up.

[Jack Brickey]

Thanks for clearing this up @Kevin Bui 

[Bill Sheboy]

To whomever is interested...

Other community members are marking the suggested answers to my original question as resolved / accepted.  I did not do so.  I recall the feature was present and was apparently removed later.  I cannot provide documentation for this as I no longer have access the rules I wrote several years ago.

[Darryl Lee]

Hey Bill. Yeah I asked somebody to mark my answer as correct as a quick review of the thread led me to believe we had figured this out. 

But as I see this answer and read ALL the threads I see how it can look like I'm casting aspersions on your assertion that the feature was there. That was wrong of me, and I apologize. 

I believe you when you say you used these features.

It seems weird for Kevin to make up a story about documentation of features that ended up not being released. So I believe him as well. 

So if I'm going to try to square things (and continue to play amateur detective)...

Maybe your former company got mistakenly added to some kind of test group/EAP that gave you access to the Sprint features and enabled you to write rules that used them.

Maybe Kevin was unaware of this EAP or maybe the developers forgot about it as well?

I mean... Atlassian's a big company, and people move around, change roles, jobs, etc.

I remember reading a story about Google forgetting they left some a/b testing running long after it was supposed to be over, losing millions of dollars in potential ad revenue. 

Anyways, apologies again Bill. Thanks as always for all you do here.  

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi, and no worries, Darryl.  I updated my post to indicate "I recall..." as without evidence there is no way for me to confirm my recollections. 

Ideally I would delete my entire question from the community to avoid confusion to others.

Kind regards,
Bill

[Darryl Lee]

So I asked around and a bug was filed yesterday:

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/AUTO-892

But later last night it was Closed as Not a bug. 

But um, I still don't see Sprint actions. Anybody else?

OH DANG - they removed the Sprint actions from the documentation:

https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/jira-automation-actions/#Start-sprint
(Link from @Jack Brickey yesterday)

Hahahahaha.

So maybe they were never there to begin with? Or they're something for the future? (Or Enterprise tier, ha!?)

[Bill Sheboy]

Thanks, @Darryl Lee and this is puzzling...

I am highly confident those actions have been present for years and so this appears to be an intentional and unhelpful change.  The work-around may be to now call the REST API functions.

My hypotheses are they are partitioning the actions (as you suggested) between license levels, or there was some previously unknown defects caused by the sprint actions not doing everything needed when performing actions like create sprint.  (e.g., this is why move issue from a rule is a bad idea)

If they were partitioning triggers/actions/etc., I would expect to see that in the documentation, as was done with the free/pro versions of Jira Server/Data Center automation.

I wonder: what is the expected behavior for customers who already had rules using those actions?

Kind regards,
Bill

[Darryl Lee]

Huh. That is weird. In looking into this, I found answers as recent as May and June 2023 talking about having to use the API: 

• Jira Automation: Create Sprint Action 
• set up automation creating new sprint 

And the ticket you referred to here is still listed as Unresolved: JSWCLOUD-20563 - As a Scrum Master, I'd like the ability to automatically start and stop sprints based on the dates I've entered. 

But I don't know. Maybe they're listening to @Nic Brough -Adaptavist- who seems dead set against the idea of automating stopping/starting sprints. Hi Nic! :-}

[Bill Sheboy]

I just checked Wayback Machine to confirm my memory and those actions were documented and available as recently as the web capture on 10 June 2023:

Complete Sprint, Create Sprint, and Start Sprint.

[Darryl Lee]

Oh I agree they were definitely documented. I saw them at the link @Jack Brickey posted above with the #Start-sprint anchor tag.

It's just that I can't find anybody talking about implementing them. Did you have them in any production OR test instance rules? :-/

According to my contact Atlassian, there were no open support issues about this, which you would imagine there would be if this was an actual feature that was removed from active rules.

[Bill Sheboy]

As I am no longer at my prior employer, I cannot check my many test rules to find an example...And even if I could I do not know what would display if an action was removed.  (Remember when you could drag branches inside of branches...and then you couldn't any longer?)

I am confident I have answered a question or two about automatically creating a new sprint when one completes (using the Create Sprint action) to enforce a naming convention.

Oh well...in my understanding: they were there and now they are gone.  No real need to drag this one out.

Thanks to everyone for the research!

[Darryl Lee]

Hi @Bill Sheboy, as always I appreciate your digging into this with me.

I found your answer where you suggested the user use the Create Sprint action. He couldn't find it, was on Cloud, and Support told him that the documentation was wrong, and that the ability wasn't there. This was on Aug 2, 2023:

• Add ability to automate creating the next 2 sprints once the current sprint closes 

Back in 2020, you referenced AUT-704 in a couple of answers, but yeah, we can't see Codebarrel's old Jira anymore. :-/

Around the same time @JD from Atlassian ("Product designer on Atlassian automation.") referenced the same ticket here:

• Automatic Sprint Completion and Creation 

I wonder if he could tell us the status of AUT-704. 

I looked in the current public Jira tickets for Automation for Cloud, and couldn't find anything open/closed relating to the actions that used to be documented.

[Jack Brickey]

Good sleuth work. I have never attempted to automate the create/start/complete sprint nor do I think I would TBH. Like Nic, I don't believe this should be a thing. What I would leverage would be a means to schedule the start/complete via a different method. I would like to set the start date within the Backlog and click "schedule start" or similar. For example, as a scrum master I plan the sprint on Friday and I set the start for Monday morning rather than having to remember to click start sprint. I have definitely forgotten to do such in the past.

[Darryl Lee]

Hi @Bill Sheboy - I just upgraded one of our test sites to Premium, and don't see Sprint there either.

Oh hey, maybe they're trying to turn it into another feature that's only available to Enterprise. :-P

[Mauricio Heberle]

Same here. No sprints

[Bill Sheboy]

Thanks for confirming, Mauricio and Darryl.  Still no open defect for this in public backlog so the team may not know about it yet.

[Jack Brickey]

indeed i do not see any sprint actions as defined in docs: Create, Start, Complete. I have verified this in both free and premium accounts. I am going to check with a colleague to see if they have noticed the disappearance.

@Darryl Lee , i would not expect (hope) this is is being restricted to Enterprise.