Automation branch cycle incorrect order of created tickets

Question

I have created an automation which iterates over child issue inside parent with a help of branch.

Everything works correctly except the fact that functions branch do not guarantee me the correct order of creating a child tickets.

Is there a way to wait for a ticket creation on previous branch iteration before proceeding to the next in cycle?

Bill Sheboy · Answer

Hi @Anatolii Borkhovych -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

Adding to the other answers...that is not possible using that branch type.

Branches which could be on more than one thing (such as on Subtasks) are executed in parallel and asynchronously.  And there is no guarantee when the branch will complete, up to the last step of the entire rule.  Please look here to learn more: https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/jira-automation-branches/#Ordering-of-branch-executions  I recall there are open suggestions to add an option for sequential processing, and / or "wait until done processing".

What this means for your rule is the subtasks are cloned as fast as possible, in no defined order.

Some work-arounds for this behavior are:

* If you have a known number of subtasks, you may "unroll" your loop by adding them one by one, without the branch.  This technique would use Lookup Issues to load the subtask's data, and then select each one for cloning by copying the fields or branching.
* Build your own application to clone, calling the REST API functions, using a programming language which supports sequential processing.
* Investigate a marketplace addon specifically for cloning issues.  Ordering issues is probably one of the primary reasons these addons exist.
* Use an elaborate self-triggering rule mechanism, which incrementally adds each next subtask.  This is a risky and brittle approach, so I would not recommend it.  It could also shut down your rule processing due to throttling.

Kind regards,
Bill

Ste Wright · Answer

Hi @Anatolii Borkhovych

You can try adding one (or multiple) "Re-fetch issue data" actions between each action, to try and push the order.

No guarantees though.

Ste

John Funk · Answer

Hi Anatolii - Welcome to that Atlassian Community!

Unfortunately, no there is not a way to control that. Automation does things in the order it wants to do them.