Comment once when two fields are changed

[Paul Wiggers]

Hello all!

I am stuck and can really use your help.

When the priority is changed, I want to inform the customer about the new priority and the impact this has on their SLA and expectations. This is simple enough and no problems there.

However, we determine the priority based on the values of two fields Impact and Urgency. When one of those fields change, the priority can change as well and this should result in a comment as triggered by the above mentioned automation.

This problem arises when both fields change. Currently, this is triggering the automation twice, resulting in duplicate comments and I cannot figure out how to circumvent this.

• We need to keep monitoring both fields since they both can impact the priority.
• Need need the automation to post multiple comments since they priority can change over time and you need to keep the customer informed over time.

Perhaps you can provide some advice on how to proceed?

How can we post a single comment when the priority is changed after one or both of the fields have changed?

Thanks in advance!

[Marc - Devoteam]

Hi @Paul Wiggers 

Based on the suggestion from @Robert DaSilva , you could try to add a JQL condition before adding the comment via the automaton rule.

key = {{triggerIssue.key}} and priority changed during (-15m, now())

[Mel Paisley]

Hey @Paul Wiggers 

If you've hit the limit with Jira automations, I'm confident you could solve it with a Forge app - but you'd need a little JS / React knowledge.  There's a tutorial on automating jira with Forge https://developer.atlassian.com/platform/forge/automate-jira-using-triggers/

[Robert DaSilva]

Hey @Paul Wiggers !

Do you have a time frame on how quickly you want your users to be alerted of the change? The easiest pathway I can think of to prevent duplicate comments is changing the trigger to be based on a schedule instead of the field changed event.

If I recall, the fastest a scheduled trigger can operate is once per 15 minutes, is this too long of a delay?

Robert

[Robert DaSilva]

And to clarify, I assume your current automation is triggering from the change in the Priority field, and you're finding that the priority may be skipping a few levels as both Impact and Urgency get changed one after the other.

[Paul Wiggers]

Yes, what is happening now is that an agent changes the Impact field (triggers the change of the priority) and right after, changes the Urgency field (triggers another change in priority). This leads to two comments being made on the issue about the changed priority. This can cause confusing with the customer, especially when the priority can get back to what it was.

15 minutes is good enough. As long as the customers are informed, I am happy. Perhaps an exception could be made for critical issues.

I am a bit rusty on the JQL side though. How would you go about targeting the issues that have had their Priority changed since the last run of the automation?

[Robert DaSilva]

The Priority field supports the CHANGED function, which will return any issues that have had that field modified. https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/jql-operators/#CHANGED

Tying this to a scheduled request that only displays work that has been modified since the last time it's run should work. Alternatively, you can search against this JQL:

priority CHANGED DURING (-15m, now())

What I will note, this might still run into edge cases where a priority gets changed twice, immediately before and after the automation rule runs.

1. Modify Priority
2. Automation Rule runs, notifies user
3. Modify Priority
4. 15 minutes later, new notification

I'll try and think of a more elegant solution, but for now this should reduce the number of duplicate notification significantly. 

Robert