Automation to change the Account Field when the epic link is changed in a Task or In an issue

[Earl Kabiling]

Hi, 

Can someone advise what automation rule to configure, please?

I would like to automatically update the Account field for linked issues of an epic when the Epic Link is changed.

Thanks, 

Earl 

[Ste Wright · Accepted solution]

Hi @Earl Kabiling

Is this for Tempo, given its the Account field?

And when you say linked issues - are these linked via a link type, or do you mean linked to the Epic as children (i.e stories have an Epic Link)?

This will help specify the rule :)

Ste

[Earl Kabiling]

thanks, Stephen! 

Yes for tempo and it's linked to the Epic as children ie  as an issue in the epic 

Thanks, 

Earl 

[Ste Wright]

Hi @Earl Kabiling 

This should be possible with Automation for Jira - this is native to Jira Cloud or is a paid add-on for Server / DC.

This is how I did it:

1. Go to the Automation rules page and create a new rule
2. Choose the trigger "Field value changed" - and type in the field "Epic Link" and press enter (it doesn't have to come up in the drop-down)
3. Next, choose the action "Edit Issue" - choose a field from the drop-down
4. A new field will appear where you can clarify where the value will come from - select to copy it from the Epic issue. The option "copy from" will either be in the field directly or through the options icon next to the new field (3-dots on right-hand side)
5. Give the rule a name and publish it

I can't check if "Account" works specifically, as I don't have Tempo in our instance. I used labels though and it worked fine.

If you weren't referencing Automation for Jira here and are using a different app, let us know :)

Ste

[Earl Kabiling]

awesome thanks mate! will check this out and yes I'm using the automation jira..

much appreciated

[Richard Sadler]

Brilliant...I've been going round in circles with this..the fact that you can add fields that are not in the dropdown (and hence you still get the error when you type it) made me think you couldn't do this....

sheer genius ... thanks 

[Dave Ness]

Hmm, I've been looking for a way to to this too, but I get stuck at Step 2. After typing in "Epic Link", I press Enter and nothing happens, I can't advance out of that field. It acts like it's validating that field and knows that the entry isn't available via the drop down. Tried all sorts of variations nothing seems to work for me. Also using Automation for Jira (Cloud).

Any ideas?

[Ste Wright]

Hi @Dave Ness 

It seems "Epic Name" now covers Epic Link also. I gave this a go and it worked on our environment.

Ste

[Dave Ness]

Thank you much!

[James Meyer-Bejdl]

I've just tried using Epic Name after having exactly the same problem Dave Ness described above. It doesn't work. The rule never gets triggered. Does anyone know if it's possible to make this work? It seems like that should just work out of the box and I have no idea why Epic Link would be absent from the dropdown

[Ste Wright]

Hi @James Meyer-Bejdl 

This workaround doesn't work anymore. It is a known bug - see AUT-1264

There is a further workaround in AUT-1264:

• Set the Trigger as Issue Updated
• Add a Condition - Advanced Compare Condition - then set...
  • First Value: {{changelog.Epic Link}}
  • Condition: does not equal
  • Second Value: Leave as Empty

^ Just to note, the rule will trigger whenever any issue is updated - regardless if it meets the condition or not.

Due to this, I'd advise having this rule at project-level, where executions are virtually unlimited - rather than global, where there are execution limits per month.

Ste 

[Dave Sausville]

@Ste Wright 

This worked brilliantly.  Never thought about monitoring the fields of {{changelog}}.  Another tool in the belt.  Thanks!!

[Dario Nanbu]

@Ste Wright 

This unfortunately doesn't seem to work for us. We're on Jira server 8.2 if that makes a difference. I've tried a lot of the proposed solutions to get automation to trigger off of Epic Link changes, but none of them have worked so far. It seems impossible to trigger off of Epic Link for our project. Any other suggestions?

[James Meyer-Bejdl]

@Dario Nanbu We're on the cloud version (but that's usually more restrictive not less) and I have managed to get this working using the changelog as suggested above but for what I needed the suggestion was too simplistic. I only wanted to actually perform an action if the change was to add, not remove, an epic link. I've been able to successfully copy a custom field from the epic when an epic link was added to a story. To do this I used the Issue updated trigger (which as mentioned above will fire on every update) and the below advanced condition which ensures that an epic link was added and not cleared:

Hope this helps you solve your issue

[Dario Nanbu]

@James Meyer-BejdlThanks for additional suggestion. Despite trying your solution, I can't seem to get the rule to log a trigger action when I change an Epic Link. I assume your advance compare is being used in conjunction with the Issue Updated trigger?

[James Meyer-Bejdl]

@Dario Nanbu Yes, I use the issue updated trigger. The whole rule is as below. The last action was a comment that I added to help test the rule but left in because it proved useful. An earlier version added a comment with both the Epic change from and to, something like this:  "Epic link changed from {{#changelog.Epic Link}}{{fromString}} to {{toString}}{{/}}. That might help of you're trying to see what's happening when the rule is triggered

[Sudipto_Roy]

@Daniel Oriold Helpful information about automation on 'Epic Link' field..

[Siree]

Thank you so much for the solution. This works perfectly.  

[David Leal]

see my answer (I don't know how to delete a replay)

[David Leal]

@Ste Wright great solution, I had the same problem, but I took a different approach, your trigger gets activated on every issue change and this is not efficient. I realized that you can use:

Then you can check the issue is not a subtask via the issue field condition (or to specify the issue type can have an epic link), By doing this the rule will be triggered less frequently. In the Change type field, you can select a specific action (add or remove the link). You can get access to the Epic link issue key via parent.key.

I hope it helps, 

David

[David Proux]

@James Meyer-Bejdl @Ste Wright These answers worked perfectly and accomplish what I needed to do. I was checking over some various scenarios and encountered a status of "Some Errors" in the rule's audit long ONLY when an issue is updated by Epic Link being removed. Any thoughts on this? Attached the rule and the log showing an issue update to remove epic link passing the If condition. 

[Ste Wright]

Hi David,

Did you find a resolution for this? When it errors, does it stop the rule from actioning?

Ste

[David Proux]

Hey Stephen, 

I did. I believe the error was in my changelog smart value format. I updated the changelog smart value to this and that seemed to clean up the "some errors". Oddly enough the rule still functioned as desired even with the "some errors"