Automating Semiannual & Quarterly Tasks in a Single Automation Rule

[Erica Robinson]

Hello, 

I'm reaching out to see if it's possible to have an automation run that will create quarterly & semiannual tasks within the same automation. 

I currently have two automations running, one for seminnual and one for quarterly. The quartly one also creates an Epic that both kinds of tickets needs to be children under.

Here are the automations as they're currently configured:

Quarterly: 

Semiannual:

As they're currently configured, we need to go into the semiannual items and manually adjust their parent values to be the Epic that was created under the Quarterly automation. 

What I'm attempting to acheive: 

• Minimal manual effort to adjust the semiannual tasks' parents
• One automation for both semiannual and quarterly tasks

[Bill Sheboy · Accepted solution]

Hi @Erica Robinson 

The schedule expressions for your rules ensure they will occur hours apart (on the overlapping days), with the Quarterly one happening at 0700 and the Semiannual one at 1500.

First, you could create a single rule using the Quarterly schedule which first does the quarterly work and then uses a Smart Value Condition to check if the date is also time for the semiannual work to do that as well.

Assuming you want to keep two rules...

Next, the current schedules seem like a long separation time between rules, potentially creating a situation where people may manually update the issues.  Have you considered running them earlier in the day, and with only an hour of separation time?

Next, your Semiannual rule could be updated to use the Lookup Issues action with JQL to identify the correct parent, eliminating the need for the manual issue updates.

Finally, please note well: when there is an Atlassian automation (or larger scale) outage, there is no guarantee of when (or if) the scheduled trigger rules will run.  Please consider what to do in that case, such as manually triggering the rule, using a separate manual trigger rule that prompts for "date to run this as", or manually creating the issues.

Kind regards,
Bill

[Erica Robinson]

@Bill Sheboy Given the amount of tickets in each, they'll likely need to be kept separate. 

Since each Epic's summary changes depending on the quarter/year, would a JQL like this work? 

project=PRJ and type=EPIC and statuscategory != done and summary ~ "\"TEXT_HERE\""

And then use {{issue.key}} for the parent values? 

[Bill Sheboy]

Yes, that could work if the issue key is in the summary.

If instead the quarter / year is in the Summary, you could use the date/ time functions to dynamically build the expression for which to search in the Summary: https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/jira-smart-values-date-and-time/

Please note well: based upon when your rule runs, the format differences between "YYYY" and "yyyy" could be relevant for the date put into the Summary, etc.

• Y is for the week-based year
• y is for the year-of-era

[Erica Robinson]

Okay, perfect, I think I've got this issue sorted out, thank you for your help! :) 

[Marc - Devoteam · Accepted solution]

Hi @Erica Robinson 

This is not an option, the schedule trigger can only use a single schedule to activate itself.

I do have another concern, as the Semi annual rule creates issues, to which of the Q Epics do the issues need to be children?

The Epic from Q1 or Q2?

[Erica Robinson]

Hey @Marc - Devoteam 

Thank you for the confirmation, I had assumed that was the case.

The first run for the semiannual needs to be assigned to the Q1 epic while the second run needs to be assigned to the Q3 epic - any that aren't finished in their assigned epic will be moved to the following Q2/Q4 epic by end users.

We've been manually adjusting the parents after creation to enusre they're assigned appropriately.

[Marc - Devoteam]

Hi @Erica Robinson 

You could create a component, label or a custom field with value, in the rule on Q have that populated based on the date the rule triggers with a value like Q1 2024, Q2 2024, etc

And then in the semi annual do a loopkup on epics and compare based on the date this rule runs the value in the found Epic needs to be Q1 2024 and then set this Epic as a parent.

I did not test this, it just an idea that popped up!

[Erica Robinson]

I ended up using pieces of this and some of Bill's suggesttions and I did get a functional test to work as I needed it to. I appreciate the help with this!