We're bringing the Lookup Issues and Create Variable actions to Automation for Jira Data Center

[#1]

We are excited to share our continued investment in Automation for Jira (A4J), which was included as native functionality in Jira Software 9.0 & Jira Service Management 5.0. Our newest release - A4J 9.0.1, that is part of Jira 9.11 release, introduces new functionalities that expand the capacity of automation for your teams.

Automation for Jira is a powerful no-code automation engine that allows customers to automate and extend Jira’s capabilities. It supports thousands of use cases, such as synchronizing parent and sub-tasks, smart auto-assigning, tracking SLAs, the ability to act on linked issues, and more.

Automation also supports more advanced processes like approval workflows or defect management. Automation can even support communication between separate instances and integrate with other tools using available webhooks-based triggers. In short, Automation for Jira empowers end-users to automate mundane tasks safely and enables easier management for admins at scale.

Today, we’re introducing 2 brand new actions called Lookup issues and Create Variable and explain why  we’re excited for your teams to enjoy these new features

Use Automated Issue Lookup to utilise automation further in your company 

In 2020 Atlassian Cloud introduced the widely requested Lookup Issues action. With the lookup issues action, users can prepare a query for issues and then use them in further actions. This is very useful for cloud users and expands the capacity of automation widely. Very soon customers suggested building the same functionality in Jira Data Center, to also empower a number of new use cases to boost teams effectiveness. And this is exactly what we did!

JIRAAUTOSERVER-53 - Bring the Lookup Issues action to Automation for Jira Server/Data Center CLOSED

Those who are familiar with the lookup issues component know how useful it can be. Whenever you want to get a list of issue keys to include in a correspondence, do routine checks on a group of issues, or just get a count of issues matching a condition, lookup issues is the component to use.

More technical details about the new Look Up Issue action can be found here.

Create Variable action to achieve more advanced use cases

We’ve also released the Create Variable functionality. This allows you to define your own smart value, which can be used in other actions and conditions in the same rule. The smart value you define can consist of other smart values, as well as math functions.

Often, in Jira automation, you want to access custom smart variables that have been defined inside a branch. If it is outside that branch then, until now it was not possible. With the new action, however, you can store a value in this variable and achieve your goal.

Technical details about his action can be found here.

How you can use it in practice?

Below are a few examples of use cases where the two new actions will be useful, along with the technical documentation describing how to implement these rules in practice.  

Sum of story points from Stories linked to an Epic

This rule updates the Story Points of an Epic by calculating the sum of the Story Points from all the Stories linked to that Epic.

Products the rule applies to: JSW 

When a Sprint is completed, send a list of issues from the Sprint

This rule sends an email containing the list of issues that were part of a Sprint that was just completed.

Products the rule applies to: JSW 

Send periodic emails with 2 lists of issues (unfinished and finished) from the ongoing sprint to inform teams or stakeholders about the progress

This rule sends a daily email containing the list of resolved and unresolved issues from an ongoing sprint.

Products the rule applies to: JSW

Automated calculation of ICE score based on filled fields and issue prioritization for effective backlog management

This rule calculates the ICE score based on the impact, confidence, and ease values, and automatically sets the priority of the issue based on the result.

Products the rule applies to: JSW

Send a periodic email with a list of issues that have been “in progress” status for longer than 5 days

This rule sends a daily email containing the list of issues that have been in the “in progress” status for at least 5 days.

Products the rule applies to: JSW/JSM

Sum of story points from Epics linked to an Initiative

This rule updates the Story Points of an Initiative by calculating the sum of the Story Points from all the Epics linked to that Initiative.

Products the rule applies to: JSW (Advanced Roadmap) 

Send periodic emails to an Advanced Roadmap Plan's stakeholder with a list of opened issues per team involved in the plan

This rule sends a daily email containing the list of opened issues from an Advanced Roadmap plan, separated by team involved in the plan.

Products the rule applies to: JSW (Advanced Roadmap)

Send Slack Message with a list of issues with SLA due in 1h

This rule sends to a Slack channel a message containing the list of issues for which the “Time to first response” SLA will breach in less than 1h.

Products the rule applies to: JSM

Send periodic emails with a list of issues from JSM queues to inform teams or stakeholders about the health of each queue

This rule sends a daily email containing the list of issues from a JSM project, separated by queue (Open issues, Unassigned issues, Issues waiting on the customer side, issues waiting on the support side).

Products the rule applies to: JSM

The JSW team looks ahead and continues the development of the product. Please check our Roadmap to learn what new features and improvements to expect in the near future in Jira Data Center.

[Tomislav Tobijas]

Cool! Thanks for the update. I know some of our clients have been waiting for this release 🙂

[Laurie Sciutti]

Awesome!  Thanks for the info, @Olga Springer !

[Stefan Salzl]

THIS IS AAAAWESOOOOME!!! ❤❤❤

[Hana Kučerová]

Fantastic!

[Janet Coffey]

I'm running Jira DC 9.4 but am not seeing the Lookup Issues action in Automation.  Was it not included?

[vincenzo_spatafora]

Dear Olga,

I use the following Jira version 

v9.12.5#9120005-sha1:fa8821c).

Could you please confirm that the lookupIssues should be now available also for the due date field?

If so, could you please tell me where to find the associated syntax?

Thanks in advance,

Vincenzo.