Comparing issue fields just got easier in Automation for Jira Cloud

[#1]

Hey there, Atlassian Community! You might have heard of our no-code automation engine in Jira.

We just shipped an update to one of its most popular features, the Issue fields condition. For the project admins out there, we think this will be a handy tool for day-to-day issue wrangling. Let’s dive in and take a look…

Hold up, what’s the Issue fields condition?

Automation rules in Jira consist of 3 types of components you can configure:

• Trigger - the event that will make your rule start

• Conditions - requirements that have to be met, for your rule to run

• Actions - the things your rule will do, if it gets triggered and meets all the conditions

What we’re talking about here is one of the conditions - the Issue fields condition. This condition checks whether an issue’s field meets a certain criteria.

Got it - so what’s new with the Issue fields condition?

Before, there were limitations around what you could do with the condition. It allowed you to select a field, and enter a specific value - that's it. So you could check for things like:

• Status is Blocked

• Issue type is Story or Epic

Now, you can compare an issue’s field with not just a value, but another field. This means you can now check for things like:

• Label is equal to Version

• Fix version contains any of Affects Version

And - here’s where we think it gets really cool! - you can also compare an issue’s field to another issue’s field. So you can check for things like:

• Assignee equals Reporter from the parent task

• Story Points is greater than Story Points from the Epic.

Alright, so how could I use this in my project?

Let’s look at an example scenario. Imagine your team recently started estimating work using story points. You know a Story or Task can’t have more story points than its Epic, so you decide to create an automation rule to check for this. Here's how that would work...

Step 1 - Trigger

All rules start with a trigger. Let’s trigger this rule when the Story Points field gets updated:

Step 2 - Conditions

Next, we'll add our Issue fields condition. Here, we’ll check if the Story Points on the issue is greater than the Story Points on its Epic, since that’s what we want to avoid.

Step 3 - Actions

And finally, let’s have the rule add a comment to the issue whenever this happens, so that the person responsible knows to look at it. We can do that with the Comment on issue action.

And there you go! This is one way you could use the Issue fields condition, but there are lots of things you can do with it. We’ve touched on other potential uses throughout this article, but feel free to come up with your own.

Are there other ways to do this?

Actually, there is. Before we added this functionality, you could accomplish the same thing using the Advanced compare condition. We won’t go into how that works here, but suffice it to say, it’s a lot more complex! Take a look:

We recommend sticking to the Issue fields condition where possible, and only going with the Advanced compare condition if you really need more complex functionality.

Where can I learn more?

If you’re excited to jump in and start creating your own rules, head to Project settings > Automation to create project rules or Jira settings > System > Automation to create rules for your entire site

If you’re keen to learn more, check out our getting started guide or our documentation:

• Automation for Jira Cloud getting started guide

• Automation for Jira Cloud documentation

[Patricia Francezi]

Nice one. 
I just miss more doccumentantio available about smart values.

i.e the docs show how to get an smart value, but it seem out of date, and so one.

[Taranjeet Singh]

Nice information, and nice article @Kevin Bui !

[Bill Sheboy]

Thanks for the information and article, @Kevin Bui 

Comparison of attributes (fields) of an issue with automation rules definitely helps fill a gap in JQL functionality.  A logical next step might be allowing such comparisons to be available as user-defined triggers.

Best regards,

Bill