How can I test new automations for big Jira projects?

[Roman S]

Hello,

I have a few projects that help me organize business processes.

For example, for onboarding, I have a separate project called "Onboarding," where different teams (HR, SysAdmins, Facilities, etc.) work on each new onboarding card.

All the teams have their own requests regarding what they want to update, automate, or add to the process. As a result, in the "Onboarding" project, I have dozens of automations, and when I add something new, it can break other logic.

So I need a test environment where I can add, remove, change, and test automations without sending notifications to all members involved in the process.

I tried using Jira Sandbox, but it didn’t copy my automations—just the project cards.

How can I organize automations-test process?

[Shiva Kumar Hiremath]

Hello Roman,

You can export the Automation from the production environment and import to sandbox environment.please accept the Answer if it works for you.

[Roman S]

@Shiva Kumar Hiremath , thank you for answer.

Yes, I tried it, but there are a few big projects (~10) in our jira and almost all of them have updates every week.

So I need to make export-import to test env -> make a work, test result -> make export-import back. I would like to find some more automatic/easy way

[Atlass Monster]

@Roman S  I suggest if you go on large scale to use additional tools for Automation. First they will make your automations more powerful and second they are more versatile for testing and replicating. You can do your own research on the marketplace.

Atlassian seems to have some APIs available for "Autmations" : https://developer.atlassian.com/cloud/automation/rest/intro/#about

They don't much but perhaps one day they will and it will be the proper way to solve your problems.

[Tomislav Tobijas _Koios_]

Hi @Roman S ,

Indeed data copied from production to sandbox does not include automation rules. You can vote for this feature here: CLOUD-11161: Data copied from production to sandbox does not include the Jira automation rule data 

Regarding how to test that out, you might want to check out the following support article: Import and export Jira automation rules. Basically, you can manually export and reimport automation rules from production to the sandbox site. Depending on the number of automations this might take some time, but from my experience, it's still the fastest way to get that copied as well.

The other option would be to create a 'sandbox' project in your production site. You can create a new project by copying the existing "Onboarding" project configuration and then just copy automation rules from "Onboarding" to a new project, or change the rule scope to cover both projects.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Tom

[Roman S]

Hello, @Tomislav Tobijas _Koios_ , thank you!

"The other option would be to create a 'sandbox' project in your production site"

In this case, can I test automations without notifying other members of the process?

Some tasks should be assigned to HR. I would like to test that they are correctly assigned to HR, but without sending notifications to them from the test environment project.

[Tomislav Tobijas _Koios_]

@Roman S , just use a different notification scheme for that project (e.g. make an 'empty one' and no notifications should come out; that's if you don't have any specific ones that automation actions are sending out, like 'send email' action or such).