"Prevent duplicates by only adding this comment once to a particular issue" not preventing duplicate

[Dylan Alperin]

I have an automation like the below where I only want it to trigger once when first assigned.

• When: Issue Assigned
  • Rule is run when issue is assigned to a user.
• If: Matches
  • Issue type equals (Internal issue type)
    • Then: Add comment to the issue
    • "Please blah blah blah"
    • Prevent duplicates is turned "ON"

Why is it duplicating when I reassign?

[John Funk · Accepted solution]

Hi Dylan - Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

Jira doesn't know when an issue is assigned if it is the first time or 20th time. So you need something else there to check it. 

Maybe try creating a new custom number field and set the default to 0. 

Then add another Condition to check if the value of the custom field is 0. If so, they it would fire.

But you also need add an Edit Issue action at the end to set the value of the custom field = 1. 

So the first time it is assigned, then the custom field is 0. The trigger passes the condition, adds the comment. And at the end of that, it updates the custom field to 1. 

The next time the issue is assigned, it checks the custom field, which is now 1. So it fails the condition check and does not fire. 

[Dylan Alperin]

I'll try the workaround but curious why there is a feature to prevent duplicates when it doesn't seem to be able to prevent them

[John Funk]

That's probably a question for Atlassian Support. 

[Bill Sheboy · Accepted solution]

Hi @Dylan Alperin -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

The option to prevent duplicates detects if the comment text (body) is exactly the same.  Does that match your use case?

If not, you will need another way to detect duplicates, such as:

• check if the previous value of the assignee was empty with an Advanced Compare Condition:
  • first value: {{#changelog.assignee}}{{fromString}}{{/}}
  • condition: equals
  • second value: empty
• or...check if any prior comments (or fields) have some pattern you can detect

Kind regards,
Bill

[Dylan Alperin]

Yes it is exactly the same, its just the one automation to add the comment so strange it doesn't detect it.

[Bill Sheboy]

Awesome; you have definitely found a bug.  I recommend working with your site admin to submit the defect here: https://support.atlassian.com/contact/#/  I was able to reproduce this symptom as follows:

Steps to reproduce:

1. create a manually triggered rule, with a single action to add a comment with some text, such as "Here is a simple comment which would should not duplicate!"
2. confirm the add comment option is "Prevent duplicates..."
3. publish the rule
4. open an issue in the same project as the rule
5. run the rule from the issue
6. run the rule a second time
7. disable the rule
8. enable the rule
9. run the rule a third time

Expected results:

Step 5 adds a comment and Steps 6 and 9 do not add duplicate comments

Actual results:

Step 5 adds a comment and Step 6 does not.  However toggling the rule off/on leads to Step 9 adding a duplicate comment.

Work-around:

Add other fields/values to detect that the comment was added earlier and check for the condition created to prevent duplicate comments.  Apparently making a change to the rule changes the thing preventing duplication.

[John Funk]

Dang - I'm worn out just reading that.  :-)  Thanks for all of the hard work, Bill!

[Caleb TeBokkel]

Is there a bug ticket somewhere for this? I still have this issue