How to exclude clones from a rule?

[Sven Meier]

Dear Community,

I have set up a rule so that when I have an Epic open and I go to add create a linked work item that the newly created story automatically takes over the content of certain fields from the epic. (FYI that rule works only if Issue Type = Story)
Now I want to exclude Stories from that rule that are being created via the "Clone" function.
Does anyone know how to do that?

Best,

Sven

[David Friedrich · Accepted solution]

Add a JQL condition to your Issue created trigger: summary !~ "CLONE - "

[Sven Meier]

Thank you so much David, that worked. 
I just needed to accept the fix that was proposed by Jira and now it looks like (maybe something to do with the Jira-version):

summary !~ "\"CLONE - \""

Follow up question. I am afraid that colleagues will change the title in the in between mask before the creation of the new / cloned story. Would you know a solution for that?

[G subramanyam]

Hi @Sven Meier welcome to the Atlassian community.

This is a classic and very practical question when setting up Jira Automation rules. 

The good news is, you absolutely can exclude cloned issues from an automation rule! The key is to add a condition that checks if the issue was created as a clone.

When an issue is cloned in Jira, a special internal link is created between the newly cloned issue and the original issue. This is usually reflected in a system field often called "Original issue" (or "Cloned from" in some configurations). We can check if this field is empty or not. If it's empty, the issue wasn't cloned; if it contains a value, it means it's a clone.

Example flow:

 Your automation rule should look something like this:

• Trigger: Issue created

• Conditions:

  • Issue fields condition: Issue Type EQUALS Story

  • AND Issue fields condition: Original issue IS EMPTY (This is the crucial part to exclude clones)

• Action: Copy field content (from Epic to Story)

After implementing, make sure to test.

[Sven Meier]

Hiii @G subramanyam 

First of all thanks for your answer!

I am currently testing your solution proposal. Unfortunately I am unable to find "original issue" in Jira. Is there another name for that field or what field should I be looking for?