How to empower Jira Automation?

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Less effort → less time → less lost money. That’s what every business desires, and that’s why automation is so popular. It really can make a difference when your workflow is stuck with manual, repetitive processes. Jira Automation isn’t some magical spell, it is not so simple to make it work. You’ll need some practice to create automation rules successfully. Let’s try to simplify this process a bit.

Why is Jira automation so popular?

It looks like every second person in Atlassian Community asks something about automation. Though the configuration can be really tough, users understand they will win more after everything is done correctly.

Jira automation means the system can catch almost every change with your issues and performs the action based on it. For example, once the Jira issue status is changed, the system creates a branch and links it to the issue. The library of triggers, conditions and actions can cover even the most specific process in your company.

• Jira Automation is suitable for relatively simple tasks. There are a lot of materials you can explore, starting from the basics: How to create rules? 
• With countless amount of templates, in most cases, there is no need to start from scratch: Jira automation template library

What drawbacks you may face

Jira Automation has some limitations you should be aware of and consider before building all the company’s processes there. 

1. It has limits based on your subscription plan. In other words, the more expensive your Atlassian plan is, the more Automation rule’s execution events system can run. Check the most relevant information here: Automation row or Automation service limits.
2. Cross-projects automation setup. Depending on your plan, Jira can allow you to create the Automation for one project or globally. In other words, if some process requires the involvement of a few projects inside the Jira, you will need to set the Automation in every project setting, affecting limits. The global and multi-projects configurations are available for Premium and Enterprise plans. 
3. Process maintenance. Once you create the rules and it perfectly works, it’s time to document them and provide as many details as possible about the logic of the way the processes have been built. The person who creates the Automation rule can be very mature around this topic, and it can be a complicated task for others to make small changes and not stop the process the people used to work. 
4. Jira setting communication. Once you build the process and people like the way it works, it is crucial to negotiate how people will make any changes to project workflow, fields, permissions, etc. Unfortunately, Automation won’t inform you that, for example, field renaming will stop some vital processes. Of course, the administrator will be informed that the rule has been broken. However, it will be hard to quickly figure out what caused the issue and how to fix it. That is why any change should be clearly communicated and adequately tested before it becomes visible to everyone.

How to overcome Jira Automation limits?

Our SaaSJet team has faced some of these items, so we’ve come up with an idea to lessen those limitations. That’s how the Business Process Manager (BPM) add-on came to life. It allows users to build the process based on Jira issues. So, the Process here is a Template of forms (Jira form) that will be added to automatically created issues. 

You can organise form logic, approval (form approval, authorisation) settings and the order of how all these parts will be started. In other words, a user has to set the forms to submit, choose the project users will be able to see, assign it to users or/and groups. Then this Template (issue template) can be used as a Process instance an unlimited amount of times. It can perfectly work for Onboarding & Offboarding processes, Timelog discipline or vacation requests.

  

Business Process Manager’s Advantages:

1. All these Templates are in one place. So, you can always report to your manager that everything is under control since important tasks and procedures are described as a workflow to run.
2. BPM allows you to build very flexible workflows, including conditions in forms, authorization procedure with approve and reject options, due dates setting for every element of the process, and finally, control over the process that has already been started.
3. It's a team-friendly tool. The power of any organization is how effective people coordinate their work and cooperate with each other. So, BPM plugin provides an easy and intuitive interface to build and make a change any time the business needs.
4. All processes can start manually, by schedule, which is the most important, as an action from other 3rd party applications or Jira Automation.

All these advantages can perfectly empower Jira Automation and make your process more tailor-made. We recommend building the process in BPM and setting rules in Automation to start the process at the right time based on triggers from Jira.

A good example here is a product release. In Jira, it’s just a button; however, you can set the procedure that will assign the checklist to the release manager with core actions he should do. 

For example: 

• Publish release notes; 
• Inform support team about the release;
• Publish marketing materials;
• Inform customers that have been waiting for some particular features or fixed defects.

How you can manage it with the BPM app + Automation

1. Build the Template with such a form.
2. Set the Automation rule that will start the process in BPM once the release manager clicks “Release”.

This is the simplest example of how we organize the release process at SaaSJet.

The main message here is that BPM resolves the limits the Automation has.

Limitations of Automation	How BPM add-on helps
It has limits based on your subscription plan.	BPM doesn’t have any limitations. Using it with Automation you can decrease the amount of Rules you need as well as the number of execution of these Rules.
Cross-projects automation setup	BPM can work with any type of Project, create the Jira issues with forms there and run the authorisation.
Process maintenance	All Templates have a Permission schema. The intuitive interface doesn’t require tech skills or consultation.
Jira setting communication	All Process Templates, Procedures and finally Process in one place. Team can work on it any time.

Takeaway

There is no perfect tool to save your efforts, time and money. Jira Automation is a really good choice for those who want to reduce time on repetitive tasks. Here is a formula for winning more while applying automation:

Jira Automation + Business Process Manager Add-on = Perfect match to work smarter, not harder.

Try out how BPM & Jira automation works together.