Atlassian changes to Automation for Jira

Jeanne Howe January 24, 2020

Just git the email from Atlassian about their changes to Automation for Jira:

There are different limits and restrictions for automation across the three Jira editions which you will need to consider.

  • Jira Software Free* – 300monthly rule executions / no multi-project or global rule functionality (*and Jira Service Desk Free)

 

  • Jira Software Standard – 2000monthly rule executions / no multi-project or global rule functionality (*Jira Service Desk Standard has 5000 monthly rule executions

 

  • Jira Software Premium* – unlimitedmonthly rule executions / full multi-project & global rule functionality (*and Jira Service Desk Premium)

 

Once again, Atlassian is taking basic functionality is pushing it into their "Premium" plan.

We have purchased and utilize the features of Jira for Automation - unlimited executions and multi-project global rules - specifically for those features. We will now loose this functionality unless we buy into "Premium".

 

Honestly, I do not know how Atlassian justifies "Premium". With Jira Cloud, you do not have access to your database, the API is extremely limited, Add-ons are limited; all of which makes metric reporting nearly impossible and severely limits the customization and behaviors you can develop in your instance.

Now, after a 325% price increase, they are taking what should be base functionality - sandbox environment, roadmapping,  project archiving, and now automations - and have pushed it into their "Premium" package.

 

It appears that the values Atlassian has always touted have changed. The one we rely on the most seems to have no value anymore:

Don’t #@!% the customer

Customers are our lifeblood. Without happy customers, we’re doomed. So considering the customer perspective - collectively, not just a handful - comes first.

 

It's a shame.

 

23 answers

1 vote
John McKiernan
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
February 6, 2022

Hey @Gwendylene Enow Tanyi

Hope all is well! This post is a little dated as we made improvements so I'll just clear it up here for you. 

All Jira Cloud customers (includes all Jira products) have unlimited single-project automations. 

Restrictions only apply for multi-project or global automation rules (Free - 300, Standard - 500 per month).

So if your rules are mostly single-project - you should be all good. If you are running into any issues with them running, pop a support ticket through. Also you can check your usage in this section as per screenshot so you can see when usage resets, how much you have used, etc.

Hope that helps!

John

Automation Usage.png 

1 vote
John McKiernan
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
March 3, 2021

That's exactly right @Marie F. Kent 

In Free and Standard plans, you have unlimited executions if they are single project rules. 

Cheers,

John

1 vote
John McKiernan
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
April 22, 2020

Hi @YC Lian _ServiceRocket_ ,

I can understand that and accept it's not the right choice for everyone. Don't forget you have unlimited single-project rules so it is only the global rules you need to consider. 

Also, just in case you work with BitBucket, GitHub or Gitlab, I just wanted to let you know we have released 5 new automation triggers which will make life easier here.

Any other questions or anything I can do to help, please let me know.

Cheers,

John 

0 votes
Gwendylene Enow Tanyi October 6, 2022

Thanks I figure that out too. 

0 votes
Gwendylene Enow Tanyi February 4, 2022

So it seems as of 2022 that regardless of whether or not this is a multi project or single project automation there is a restriction on the automation count. Is that correct? Because most of my automation is single project now and it still won't run.

0 votes
Jeanne Howe March 3, 2021

@John McKiernan 

"Just for context the Automation for Jira app had a free version and a paid version. The paid version had no limits (similar to Jira Software Premium now) and the free version of the app had pretty strict limits (from memory 300 total executions per month). " 

For those of us that had the paid version, which included unlimited transactions, this rule change was a very big deal. As far as I am concerned, I still have a "paid version". I pay Atlassian instead of the original vendor, and I lost a very big part of this add-ons functionality because of that. So while this may have been

       "a totally new feature to tens of thousands of customers",

it was also a blatant stripping of features for tens of thousands of customers

0 votes
John McKiernan
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
March 3, 2021

Hey @Jeanne Howe ,

Thanks for jumping in. Just for context the Automation for Jira app had a free version and a paid version. The paid version had no limits (similar to Jira Software Premium now) and the free version of the app had pretty strict limits (from memory 300 total executions per month). 

When Atlassian acquired the Automation for Jira app, they gave unlimited single-project automations to all customers, including Jira Free customers. This was a totally new feature to tens of thousands of customers with the only limit being global rules. 

There are limits on the global/cross-project automations in Free and Standard plans as you mentioned above. It is indeed more economical if you work across hundreds of projects to create global/multi-project rules and the best place to do this is Jira Software Premium. Granted it does cost more (compare plans here) but the package was created with features to help companies scale. 

Just wanted to make sure all context was included for the conversation :)

Cheers,

John 

0 votes
Jeanne Howe March 3, 2021

@Marie F. Kent When Atlassian purchased the Automation for Jira ad-on the first thing they did was to arbitrarily set limits on rule executions. What was the impact of these arbitrary limits - if you have 200 projects in Jira and you want a rule to ensure that a Story can not be resolved until all sib-tasks of the Story are resolved, you could write a global rule and apply it to all your projects. If your Jira usage is anything like mine, you will hit that " monthly limit" about 2 weeks into the month. At which point the rule will simply stop working.

To avoid hitting the "monthly limit" instead of a single global rule you will now have to write the same rule 200 times, once for each project. You will then have to maintain and sync 200 rules for this one automation. Need another automation, now you have 400 rules to maintain and keep in sync. Oh, and let's not forget, any project admin can go into their projects and turn off these rules at any time.

0 votes
Marie F. Kent March 3, 2021

Thanks @John McKiernan !

0 votes
Marie F. Kent March 3, 2021

@John McKiernan ,

Just to confirm, a standard plan has unlimited executions if they are single project rules. Is that correct?

Thanks!

0 votes
YC Lian _ServiceRocket_ April 22, 2020

Just want to put it out there that my team is affected by this and one alternative we are adopting is to fall back some rules to JSD automation capabilities that are come together with our JSD subscription.

In short, we are reducing how we are using Global/Project Automation, keeping the credits for more essential automation rules.

0 votes
John McKiernan
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
April 14, 2020

Hey Ricky,

We can't announce the exact date just yet but it won't be long. Your Jira Admin will be notified and it will be automatically turned on so no action will be needed. 

You will get an email about it all close to the time so you will have plenty of notice.

Cheers,

John 

0 votes
Ricky Aladort April 13, 2020

Thank you for your reply @John McKiernan

Do you know the approximate date for when our entire instance will be upgraded to Jira Premium? And will this happen automatically or will our Jira Administrator be notified that the upgrade is available ahd have to "turn it on"?

0 votes
John McKiernan
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
April 12, 2020

Hi Ricky, 

Apologies for late response, just getting back from Paternity leave! 

Yes your company's entire Jira instance will be upgraded to Jira Premium automatically during that time period so users can experience Advanced Roadmaps. It will be the same instance (rather than a new test instance). You can choose to downgrade back to Jira Cloud Standard at any time. 

Hope that helps but let me know if you have any other questions or equally feel free to email at jmckiernan@atlassian.com

Cheers,

John

0 votes
Ricky Aladort April 7, 2020

Hi John

My company is on Jira cloud standard and only a handful of users currently use Portfolio. It's my understanding that these users will receive a free 6-month trial for Jira Premium to test the Advanced Roadmaps product as they will lose access to Portfolio in October. How will these Portfolio users receive that free trial? Will my company's entire instance be upgraded to Jira Premium as a free trial? Will these users receive access to a wholly different instance to test Advanced Roadmaps?

Thanks.

0 votes
John McKiernan
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
April 1, 2020

Hi Jeanne, 

No the roadmap feature in Jira Standard unfortunately won't allow for multi-team and multi-project roadmaps. These are features for the Premium offering. 

The functionality for Automation for Jira won't change at all. In fact, we have already released new features including 5 new triggers. There are limits for multi/global project rules to consider though in Standard plans as you know.

I appreciate that it isn't ideal for everyone though. I'm sorry I can't give better advice around it but I can answer any other questions you have. 

Cheers,

John

0 votes
Jeanne Howe April 1, 2020

John,

Will the Roadmap feature in Jira Standard allow for multi-team.multi-project roadmaps? Will it show dependencies? Sprint and Release dates?

This is the functionality your are REMOVING from my "standard" Jira. Functionality that I have had, and rely on, for many years.

IN the email you sent me in regard to my first inquiry of Automation you stated:

"Just to be clear, there is no functionality being removed from Jira"

I think you are playing a game of semantics. Jira "standard" is definitely on the losing end of these "upgrades"

Jesnne

0 votes
John McKiernan
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
March 31, 2020

Hi Jeanne, 

I hear where you are coming from. Trying to get the balance right is a challenge. 

We felt like offering unlimited automation executions at a single project level provides great value to a large number of customers but I know it's not perfect for everyone. 

Regarding Portfolio, the good news is that we are also working hard to ensure every Jira customer has access to a roadmap as part of our Free and Standard plans as well. The basic roadmap should meet the needs of small teams and Portfolio will be more for the multi-team, multi-project functionality and more advanced features like capacity management. Also, with an extended 6 month trial will give customers ample time to choose between the different offerings. 

I hope that helps but feel free to reach out here or my email: jmckiernan@atlassian.com

Thanks,

John 

0 votes
Jeanne Howe March 31, 2020

@John McKiernan @Erin Mihalik 

 

So if we don't go to Premium and I have a rule that is used by 150 projects I now have to create, and maintain, 150 individual project rules.

In addition, Atlassian just dictated that Portfolio will no longer be available for Jira Cloud "Standard".

Tell me again how Atlassian is not removing functionality from JIra Standard in order to force customers into paying for Premium.

0 votes
John McKiernan
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
March 26, 2020

Hey @Erin Mihalik ,

Thanks for your message. 

Just to clarify, as a former Automation for Jira customer - you will now be on the extended free trial of Jira Premium (until June 2nd) so all rules will run as normal.  

From that date, you have the choice to continue with Jira Premium and have unlimited multi-project & global automation rule executions (*unlimited for former AFJ customers) as well as all the other offerings in Premium. 

Or you can downgrade to Jira Standard plan where you would have 500 global/multi-project rule executions per month. You can see the full comparison here: https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/pricing

If you were hesitant to move to Premium but are worried that you will be using more than 500 global rules per month, it is possible to economize the rules to make many single-project rule executions (which are unlimited for everyone) but I recognize this isn't an ideal solution if you are using it at a bigger scale. 

I hope that helps clarify and give some information but please do let me know if you have any other questions.

Cheers,

John 

0 votes
Erin Mihalik March 26, 2020

@John McKiernan  we are in the same boat. I recently constructed over 25 rules and most are global or multi project and our rules run on almost every item transitio

We also were paying for the plugin already.

We migrated to using Jira for software development and did so pretty smoothly because we removed so many menial tasks from the developers with automation.  We will now have to train the entire team again if these rules are no longer able to be used. 

0 votes
Jeanne Howe March 4, 2020

@John McKiernan sending you and email

0 votes
John McKiernan
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
January 24, 2020

Hey Jeanne,

thanks for your feedback. John from the automation team here. 

We designed these changes in order to minimize any disruption to your work and to help customers scale confidently in Cloud. I appreciate your concerns here though and want to make sure you are across all of the options open to you. 

I'd love to chat through what this means for you specifically. Let me know if you want to arrange a time to chat through it (jmckiernan@atlassian.com). 

Cheers,

John

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