Need help with scheduling in automation to create an issue on 2 weekdays before last weekday of mont

[Abhilasha Tyagi]

First, I want to create an issue automatically with a schedule trigger every 2 business days prior to last business day of the month.

Second, to create an issue on 2 business days prior to first business day of month. 

I have thought and tried a lot but no idea how to go about it. Smart values like {{LW.minusbusinessdays(2)}} or any other smart values are throwing error in cron expression. I believe it is not allowed there.

Any assistance would be of great help. Thanks.

[Mark Segall · Accepted solution]

Hi @Abhilasha Tyagi and welcome to the community!

There is no explicit way to capture this as a cron that I'm aware of. However, you could go this route:

• TRIGGER: Scheduled (Daily)
• CONDITION (Smart Value)
  • {{now.startOfDay}}
    Equals
    {{now.startOfDay.endOfMonth.minusBusinessDays(2)}}
    
• ACTION: Create Issue

This will execute daily and check to see if the current run time is 2 business days before the end of the month. If the condition passes, create the issue, otherwise exit.

[Abhilasha Tyagi]

Thanks for your response. now.startOfDay.endOfMonth - what does this return? Is this same as last business day of the month?

[Mark Segall]

So what should be happening is that it's validating whether the execution start of day matches the start of day for 2 business days before the end of month.

[Bill Sheboy]

Greetings!

Adding to Mark's suggestions, please review the documentation for the automation date / time functions to understand their behavior:

https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/jira-smart-values-date-and-time/

Kind regards,
Bill

[Abhilasha Tyagi]

@ Mark, Since I am interested in 2 business days prior to last business day of month besides 2 days before last day of month,  can I edit the condition parameter as 

• {{now.startOfDay}}
  Equals
  {{now.startOfDay.lastBusinessDayOfMonth.minusBusinessDays(2)}}

[Abhilasha Tyagi]

this is what it looks like ..do you think this will work.Asking for validation coz there is no way I can test it until this EOM. 

[Bill Sheboy]

You can test almost anything in rules immediately, as follows:

• action: create a variable with the date value to use, instead of {{now}}
  • name: varMyDate
  • smart value: 2026-10-05
• convert that to a date to use in your expression with toDate:
  • {{varMyDate.toDate}}
• test your rule until it works as expected
• edit your rule to replace with the dates needed, such as {{now}}

When I test for several cases in scenarios like this, I create a list of dates, and iterate over them to test:

• action: create variable
  • name: varListOfDates
  • smart value: 2024-01-01,2024-01-31,2024-02-01
• advanced branch:
  • name: varADate
  • smart value: {{varListOfDates.split(",")}}
    • test each value for {{varADate.toDate}}

[Abhilasha Tyagi]

Really appreciate your help, Bill. 

The test run is working as expected for 1 case only. When {{now}} is replaced by another variable with value 2024-10-29 the  issue got created. However it is not giving desired results with date variable set to 2024-11-27 (i.e issue should have been created as 27th Nov is 2 days before last working day (29) in Nov.

What is going wrong now?

[Bill Sheboy]

Please post an image of your complete test rule, the action where the date change is happening, and the audit log details showing the rule execution.  Thanks!

[Abhilasha Tyagi]

here when date is date in October, issue gets created correctly. 

[Abhilasha Tyagi]

But when variable date is set in November, the if condition does not pass and issue is not created.

[Bill Sheboy]

Isn't the last business day (i.e. Monday-Friday) of November 2025 the 28th, not the 27th?  And so your test day should be the 26th.

Rather than create issues in testing, I recommend using the list method I described and just writing both dates to the audit log.  That will reduce cleanup after testing.

[Abhilasha Tyagi]

I am testing for 2024 not 2025.

[Bill Sheboy]

Your test dates shown in the create variable images are both for 2025.  Please change them and re-test.

[Abhilasha Tyagi]

Good Catch. Thanks .Its working.