How can you change project category with Jira Automation?

[Josh Fuller]

I am currently the only admin for my team. New projects are created by me, then they team will come in a populate the project. Currently they can do everything themselves except set the project category that we use for sorting dashboards. I have to come back in and change the category upon request.

I am looking to use a custom field they fill out to act as the project category, then use Jira Automation to populate the category based on their selection. My issue is, when I try to use "Set Project Property", it runs successfully but I see no change.

I am using {{issue.fields.project.projectCategory.name}} as the property key and the value comes from a custom field laid out as {{customfield_10204.value}}

Is this a valid approach and if so, where am I going wrong? I've adjusted syntax a couple dozen times and finally decided to write a post here for pointers.

Thanks!

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

My instinct is to dig a bit deeper - why would you want to automate a structural change like this?  Categorisation of projects is something that always requires a human to think about it, and it something that is so infrequent, even typing your question has taken more time and thought than you'd get back from building an automation to do it for the next decade.

What value might you get from this?

[Josh Fuller]

Hey Nic,

My team kicks off a project about 3-4 times a month, and we have only 3 project categories. By automatically setting the category, all the dashboards will reflect the new work of a kicked off project immediately without need me to come back in to change thing.

The key to this automation is to eliminate a potential bottleneck for the team and ensure I don't have to live within 5 ft of a computer.

I hope that makes sense.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Automation is aimed at automating things you do a lot when certain things happen, and is really aimed at issue changes.

3-4 times a month for something you probably couldn't automate because it requires human input anyway isn't what it is for.

[Josh Fuller]

Are you saying this is not possible because automation is designed for issue level editing, and therefore can not change project level data?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Pretty much - it's not for changing config, it's for working with issues.

[Josh Fuller]

That lines up with what I've been seeing. I've gotten the automation to fire correctly, it just don't update.

Thanks for the explanation. I'll explore alternative methods to build our JQL queries then.

[Kappaluppa]

Josh, I had the exact same need for the same reasons. I know you accepted Nic's answer, but his rationale does not work for me.

Were you able to figure this out?

Thanks!

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Josh Fuller 

First, I believe only a site admin can set that property, by default.  Do you have sufficient permissions?

Next, maybe try calling the REST API manually to confirm the property name you want to set:

https://docs.atlassian.com/software/jira/docs/api/REST/1000.824.0/#api/2/project/{projectIdOrKey}/properties-getPropertiesKeys

And, where will you have the project team set a custom field that can be used with an automation rule: on an issue?

Best regards,

Bill

[Josh Fuller]

Hey Bill,

I am the sole admin for the site currently, so I should have all permissions. I can manually change the category, so I figure through automation should be no different?

I have a project summary card (an epic in Jira work management so it won't behave like an epic) that houses the custom field. This summary is a description of the project goal (something the evolves for the first few months of our project, so it is a bit iterative) and the details such as category, team members requested, ROI calculations etc.

I'll play around with the REST API calls. I'm fairly new to them, so I was borrowing from previously answered community questions. If I were a betting man, I would bet on me having the wrong property key for project category.