Automation Help: Create 10 Issue Clones, Different Due Dates

[Linda C]

I'm playing around with Jira automation to manage compliance tasks that must be tracked and completed at set intervals.

Having trouble writing an automation rule that will do the following:

• Trigger: Upon manual trigger <-- I think I can figure out (tbd)
• Condition: For select label criteria in a project <-- I think I can figure out (tbd)
• Action: Create 11 clones of original issue; each one w/ a different due date (30th of each month after the month of original issue).  <-- Struggling greatly

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

[John Funk]

Hi Linda,

Can you share the rule that you have so far?

[Linda C]

Hi John, here's where I started...

[John Funk]

You should be able to just add a new action for each clone below the other and change the Due Date on each one. 

[Linda C]

If I'm understanding correctly, I think your suggestion is to create a new rule for each clone I desire vs creating one automation rule that creates [x] number of rules with staggered due dates. Unfortunately, that amounts to more work than just directly adding [x] new issues since the only thing that 'needs' to be cloned from the original issue is the summary.

[John Funk]

No, just keep adding a new action to the end of what you have already. One new action per clone. 

[Linda C]

I think Jira limits the number of actions that can be added to an automation to 60. I have a different rule that would need 120 (10yrs of of monthly recurring due dates). Jira Sales Support could only point to 3rd party apps for supporting a looped script. I sincerely wish that Atlassian would add recurring due dates to the Jira roadmap, especially since Jira already recognizes the importance of Calendar vs Business days.

[John Funk]

Why create that many out in advance? Just create them month to month as they are needed. Close one month, create the next month. 

[John Funk]

And here's the world's best article on creating recurring tasks - closing one month, automatically creating the next month.   :-)

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-articles/Creating-a-Flexible-Recurring-Task-Issue/ba-p/2040862

[Linda C]

Happy to take a look at article later today, thanks for sharing and engaging.

To quick answer your question re 'why create all now', it's a compliance thing. A key audit parameter that has been non-negotiable is to have a display of ALL tasks over the term of our financing facilities (typically 3-10yrs). Just setting up the next occurring task will not meet that mark (wish it did :-).

[John Funk]

You could probably set it up to an issue and set the Recurring Need custom field value mentioned in the article. Then create another rule that clones that issue when an issues is created with that value in the custom field (I would used Monthly)  but also add a condition that limits the creation based on a time period for the Due Date. That should probably do the trick. 

[Tansu Akdeniz]

Hi @Linda C 

Welcome to the community.

You can format / manipulate the dates. Please take a look at Examples of using smart values with dates page. But I am not sure if you could iteratively add days to due date in a loop. But if you have separate clone issue actions, you can do it for sure.

[Linda C]

Thanks for responding. Separate clone issue actions would amount to the same amount of work as not using automation. For Jira to meet my needs, I would one rule that can apply a multitude of due dates. Best-L