Automation rules and auto updating a calculated field

[Dimman]

Hello,

following some advice found on the forum, i was able to create an automation rule that performs a simple "risk score" calculation, by multiplying impact times likelihood (all numeric fields) - see example below:

The rule is working and the calculation is performed as can be seen here:

What DOES NOT happen is to have the field auto-updated when i change either the Impact or the Likelihood. I can only see the updated value after i reload the page showing the issue.

To be honest, i am not sure if the default / correct behaviour is to NOT auto update. I was looking around for some example and i stumbled across this: https://www.innovalog.com/videos/37-jmwe-cloud-videos/243-automate-jira-cloud-calculations

The video in this page seems to suggest that the calculated field auto-updates as soon as one of the other fields changes - but also seems to be on an older / different version of JIRA.

TL;DR: Is it possible to have a field auto-update its calculated (via a rule) value without needing to reload the page?

Thanks for your time

/D

[MN · Accepted solution]

As Jack already mentioned it is not suppose to work like you expect. The field value is updated in the "database" when the rule executes, but the values are loaded to the page just once ("when you load the page"). 

Its just how its built. Rules are executed separately somewhere in backend and the browser is not aware of it. So the field values are actually changed , but you see old information. 

Theres always some drawbacks with that approach - otherwise you would need to have lot of network action going on constantly and browser would consume lot of energy. Thus these dynamic fields you look for are rather expensive.

[Dimman]

Thanks @MN 

you are the second person confirming that this is expected behaviour so i will trust that there is no way to do this. I will wait a few more hours to see if anyone comes with any brilliant solution otherwise i will accept your and @Jack Brickey 's answers.

Did you by any chance had the time to look at the demo shown at the URL i provided? If you check around the 1:50 mark it seems that the person doing the demo gets an "auto update" without refreshing, but as i wrote to Jack it might just be video editing

Thanks

[Jack Brickey · Accepted solution]

Hi @Dimman , what do you mean by auto update without reloading the page? To be clear if you are displaying an issue and the update a field that is used to trigger an automation rule, in order to see the updated field you will need to reload the page to observe the field updated by the rule. This isn’t an automation issue it is a Jira browser behavior. Here is an analogous example. If you have two browser tabs open viewing the same issue and you update a custom field on one tab you will not observe the updated field in the second tab until you reload the page.

[Dimman]

Hey @Jack Brickey 

just to be clear, i am not claiming that this is a bug, i am mostly trying to understand what is the "proper / default behaviour".

I have very little (to none) experience with the automation rules and my impression s come from this video: https://www.innovalog.com/videos/37-jmwe-cloud-videos/243-automate-jira-cloud-calculations

If you forward to around 1:50 in the video, you will see the person demonstrating the use of the rule they created and it LOOKS LIKE the calculated field updates without the page refreshing.

There is a chance that this is just "video editing" on their part and that the proper behaviour is to refresh the page but i wouldn't know.

Cheers

[Jack Brickey]

Understand. I see in the video this is JMWE. Indeed in the video they show the following…

I don’t have hands-on familiarity with JMWE and if/how it is auto-updating the field but will assume that it does based on the video. 

[Dimman]

Thanks for looking into this. I initially thought that this was the previous iteration of "Automation" but now that i Googled it i saw it's a plugin so not relevant to my case.

I will accept your answer and happy holidays!

[Pramodh M]

Hi @Dimman

It will actually, add the triggers for the issue updated event!!

Thanks,
Pramodh

[Pramodh M]

May I Know you are achieving the rule via JMWE or Automation?

[Dimman]

Hey,

i am using the "built-in" Automation function of Jira

Below is how my rule looks like:

I am not sure what you mean by "add the trigger for the issue update". As i said, the rule executes and the value changes (i can verify this under the history tab) but it does not become immediately visible. 

If i refresh the page i can see the updated value but my hope is that the value will update without needed a full page refresh

Cheers

[Lukas]

@DimmanI've searched for my similar problem a solution. I have two Jira cloud instances, one is free, another one is paid. On free instance, the automation rules can get immediately executed, without refreshing the site, but on paid instance, I have to refresh the page on every automation rule execution, which is very big show stopper. It's exact the same cutom fields, and same automation rules. I'm just wondering, what can cause this strange behavior. Did you found any solution for you issue?