Create a ticket via JSM Chat and set the original message from Slack/Teams as the description

[#1]

When using JSM Chat to create requests, the Assist bot sets the original message as the ticket summary - it's not possible to configure if it should be the issue's summary or description.

There is an open feature request to include this: Ability to set if the reacted message becomes the issue summary or description.

To workaround this limitation, this article offers an Automation rule to paste the original message's content as the Jira ticket description.

💡 What's the idea?

Assist adds the original message that triggered the ticket creation as a comment on the Jira ticket.

The rule will copy the comment to the Description field.

🛠️ The Rule Itself

1. WHEN comment added
   
2. IF the ticket does not have the label 'description' (this is an example label, you can use any label you'd like)
   
   
3. IF the comment comes from Halp
   
   

   First value: {{comment.properties}}
   Condition: contains
   Second value: halp 

   • JSM Chat runs on a Halp platform, which is why on the backend the comment's properties include the word halp. Halp is being discontinued as JSM Chat/Assist integrates it
     
4. THEN (if both match) it will add the label 'description' to the ticket
   
5. AND it will edit the description of the ticket with the contents of the first comment added to the ticket (aka the bot's comment with the original message from Slack/Teams)

   {{issue.comments.first.body}} 

🏷️ Why the label?

The rule is triggered upon every comment added to the project, so the label part is fundamental as a safety net. When the rule executes the first time on the new ticket, the label will be added and when the rule is triggered again (on the same ticket), the label cut the rule execution short - right on step two.

This saves on pointless resource usage and most importantly, allows the description field to be safely edited without another rule execution on the same ticket accidentally overwriting updates to the description.

🚨 Key points (this is important!)

• The label used must be created beforehand. The rule itself won't create a new label. (you can create a new label by adding it to any existing ticket)
• The request type's form used for ticket creation in Slack/Teams should NOT include the Description field. This is so the user can't add a description at all and the rule execution won't overwrite the user's input.
• The rule must be scoped to a single project to avoid running into execution limits and also avoid it running on other projects that also use JSM chat and the rule's actions aren't desired.

🧼 Tidying up

To make the ticket look cleaner, some suggestions are:

• On the edit issue action, include the summary field with a smart value to truncate its size. For example, this smart value will keep only the first 50 characters from the summary:

  {{issue.summary.substring(0, 50)}}

• You can consider adding a final action on the rule to delete the comment added by assist (as it is now on the ticket description).
  

  {{comment.id}}

🍮 The proof

Here's a video showing the rule working in Slack (without and with the extra tidying-up steps):