JQL Search for Current User + Flag Character

[Evan Nixon]

Howdy,

I'm trying to create a search filter that allows me to show comments which have tagged the current user, plus a special character as a flag. The purpose of this is to make a "Comments Requiring Replies" filter. 

In a task I'd like users to be able to tag another user and add an exclamation mark (or other character) after tagging the user so that it can be marked as needing attention/needing a reply.

For example:

I'm not married to this exact method at all, I really just need a way to show a logged in user that there's a comment on a task, and they need to reply / pay attention to it before the task can move forward. 

The JQL I've attempted to use is based on the search "comment ~ currentUser()" which does work, but figuring out how to add the operator in there is proving really friggin difficult. 

So far I've tried:

comment ~ currentUser()!
comment ~ "currentUser()!"
comment ~ (currentUser()!)
comment ~ "currentUser()!"

and every other combination of spaces, quotes, brackets and prayer to ancient deities that I could come up with. Any advice is greatly appreciated. 

[Evan Nixon]

Okay, I have attempted an alternative and possibly better option, adding a Custom Multi-User Picker Field "Waiting on Reply".

This is much easier to filter for, and will allow the "flag for attention" to be removed with automation once the relevant user has replied. However I've now run into a new snafu - automation to remove a user who has commented on a task from that task's "Waiting on Reply" field. 



I cannot get this automation to work properly to save my life. I've tried using :

"remove": "{{initiator}}"
"remove": "{{initiator.displayName}}"
"remove": "{{comment.author.displayName}}"

as well as several other combinations, and it's still not doing what it should. 

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Evan Nixon 

Please try the accountId value instead of trying to remove by name:

{{initiator.accountId}}

If the "remove" action does not work, you could also try this the harder way:

• Expand the existing field values into a list, and remove the relevant accountId using conditional list filtering, storing as a created variable
• Use the "set" action to replace the other values

Kind regards,
Bill

[Evan Nixon]

Thanks very much for your reply @Bill Sheboy !

Your solution got me most of the way there, {{initiator.accountId}} was indeed the target I needed, the last bit of the solution was to change "update" to "fields". I've got no idea why that worked - but it did. 

This is what the working automation for removing a user from a custom field now looks like. I don't think that using the "customfield" identifier as opposed to it's name made a difference, but I chose to use that identifier just in case. 

I would still like to try and figure out how to add a user to the "Waiting on Reply" field using automation, that way users can flag a comment as needing a reply from within the Teams/Slack integration instead of having to be in Jira to manually add a user to the field. Will have to do some thinking on how to accomplish this. There has to be a way to mark one particular user (or more than one user) as the target for the automation to add to the Waiting on Reply field - hopefully I can figure it out. 

Thanks again!


Edit:

Turns out the method I've used above is very much so imperfect - if there are multiple users in the "Waiting on Reply" field it does not just remove {{initiator.accountId}}, it removes everyone. Eugh. 

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Evan Nixon 

Regarding the "update" and "fields" in the JSON, one is a subset of the other:

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/advanced-field-editing-json/#Advancedfieldediting-JSON--What-sthedifferencebetweenupdateandfields

And sorry that did not work as you expected.  The other work-around I mentioned earlier was to grab all of the values from the current field as a list, and use conditional list filtering to remove just the one value.  Then when you overwrite the field only one will be removed.