Automate moving issues from the backlog to the ready status

[Sean Aguilar]

I have a backlog and my first status after backlog is ready. I want to run an automation that counts the number of issues in my ready status, and if its less than 5 then I want to move issues from backlog to ready until there are 5 issues in ready. I want to move them out of the backlog in rank order.

How would I go about this? Thanks in advance.

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Sean Aguilar -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

I assume your team is using Kanban practices and a Jira Kanban board.  What you describe is often called Queue Replenishment, and I suggest learning more about the manual / people steps involved in that practice before automating it as doing so may remove some of the benefits.

Back to your question...

What you describe is possible, and you could do this with an automation rule with:

• a scheduled trigger,
• a lookup issues action to check the number of issues in "Ready",
• a condition to check the lookup before proceeding,
• another lookup issues to gather backlog issues with ORDER BY Rank ASC, and
• finally a loop (or single operation) to transition one/or more issues.

The tricky part will be pulling the correct number of issues in one rule, which can be done with variables and advanced branching.  A simpler approach would be to only pull in one issue at a time and have the rule run more frequently.  (I would recommend against that as the packaging model is changing for automation rules.)

To get you started on creating your rule, please refer to these documentation and example sources: 

• https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/guides/automation/overview#what-is-automation
• https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/automation-template-library#/rule-list?systemLabelId=all&page=1&pageSize=20&sortKey=name&sortOrder=ASC
• https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/jira-smart-values-issues/
• https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/use-advanced-search-with-jira-query-language-jql/

And if you run into problems creating your rule, please post images of your complete rule, the audit log details showing the execution, and explain what does not work as expected.  Those things will provide context for the community to help.

Kind regards,
Bill