Conditional Automatic Ticket Assignment

[James Mclellan]

I would like to change ticket assignment only if the ticket is unassigned when someone performs an action (for example, adds a comment).

I tried an Automation rule to set the assignee to 'automatic'. The rule runs successfully according to the logs, but the assignee has not been updated.

Any ideas?

[Jack Brickey · Accepted solution]

@James Mclellan, can you provide a screenshot of your automation/ Do you want it assigned to the person making the comment or someone specific?

[James Mclellan]

@Jack Brickey thank you for the help. I'm trying to assign the ticket to the Service Desk Agent performing the action.

This is the rule:

In testing, the logs show the rule having run successfully:

But the assignee does not change.

[James Mclellan]

I may be approaching this the wrong way. Ultimately, I have a problem with Service Desk Agents not taking ownership of the tickets they are working, or someone starting work on a ticket, but someone else finishing it w/o updating assignments. 

I would like to resolve this by automatically assigning the ticket to the person taking a substantial action (closing the ticket, or making a the first comment to the customer, for example)

[Jack Brickey]

the "automatic" in the value does not resolve to the person editing that would be "currentuser" unfortunately it appears that "currentuser" is not an option w/in the "Then" actions.

Have you looked at implementing via the workflow as a post function? For any transition add a post function to assigne to current user. Now I realize that this will not meet one of your requirements "if the issue is unassigned". But likely Unassigned normally would only exist in the initial status so adding just to the one status might be ok?

otherwise the only thing i can think to suggest is a plugin e.g. Scriptrunner and there are others but if you are on Cloud it is limited.

[Jack Brickey]

@James Mclellan, i think our notes crossed path. When you refer to "taking ownership" it sounds like they are taking ownership because they are actually working the issue BUT they are not updating the Assignee field. If this is correct then as I mentioned above the best (?) approach is to ensure that there is a post function on the transitions to set assignee to currentuser. The downside, as you may know, is that if Sally is actually doing the work but Fred (maybe the project manager) transitions an issue on her behalf then it gets assigned to Fred. In this case Fred has to be on his toes and manually set back to Sally.

[James Mclellan]

@Jack Brickey that was it. Thank you.