How do I bulk update all comments on a given ticket? Possibly using smart values?

[Catherine Jarosz]

I need to grant access to old core tickets, and need the comments on those tickets not to be visible to the new users.

I have set up issue security, and know that comments can be individually updated to a specific visibility using that, but with sometimes over 100 comments per ticket that's not viable. 

I've tried the "Edit comment" automation action, which states that you can update a comment's visibility while preserving its content if you leave the text box blank, however the only options for doing this are to edit the first, last, or trigger comment, so that will only edit 1 at a time.

The final option is to edit the comment based on smart value, which I have tried but this results in either an error saving the rule or an error in the audit log saying "Error editing comment - smart-value did not resolve into a number." - this error was shown when using the smart value {{#issue.comments}}{{/}}

Is there a way of selecting all available comments on an issue, or is there another way to update all comments' security?

[Mark Chaimungkalanont · Accepted solution]

hhmm interesting question... It's a bit tricky but you can use an

1. "Advanced branching" branch with {{issue.comments}} with a variable name thisComment
2. Edit comment action, pick smart value and {{thisComment.id}} this will let you edit all of the comments of an issue

I had a quick play and this seems to work! Good luck!

[Catherine Jarosz]

Thank you for this! I'm getting a separate error when running the automation, which I have run past Atlassian support directly. Once that is resolved I will try this approach and let you know.

[Catherine Jarosz]

Hi Mark,

With that error fixed this has worked perfectly, thank you.

[Tiago Almeida]

Hi Mark,

Great solution for this. Was looking for something like this and your solution fulfilled my requirement as well.

And thanks Catherine for the original question.

Thanks!