Top 5 Jira Basic Automation Every Team Can Use

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In the fast-paced world of project management, keeping track of tasks, ensuring team members are on the same page, and eliminating redundant manual work can be challenging. Luckily, Jira's powerful automation engine can help streamline your workflows, reduce administrative overhead, and ensure your team stays focused on what matters most: delivering value.

In this article, I would like to provide my Top 5 Basic Jira Automation Rules examples ( just 3 steps so very easy to implement) that might be useful for actually almost every team. 

Let' start with classic transition when a certain condition is met.. 

#1 - Auto-Transition Issues (When Certain Conditions Are Met)

Manually moving issues through various stages of your workflow can lead to delays and inconsistencies especially when we want to do the move when something is triggered e.g increased Priority or escalation. Automating transitions ensures that issues move forward when specific criteria are met, saving time and reducing the risk of missed steps.

Example: You can use it when a date passed (e.g Due Date) and someone have look at this (issue would be moved to a dedicated status e.g. Need Action)

Moving on to something very useful when dealing with issues that need to be somehow triaged based on some criteria .. 

#2 - Auto-Assign Issues (to the Right Team Member)

Assignment of issues can be time-consuming, and it’s easy for tasks to slip through the cracks if they aren’t assigned correctly. Jira automation allows to automatically assign issues based on set criteria, ensuring that the right person (or group, role, etc ... ) is always responsible for a task.

Example: You can use it when a priority issue was created (or with specific component) and then select a dedicated team which should handle this work. Not sure who to choose then let Jira decide (use round robin to make the assignment so that it would not land in one person queue creating a bottleneck).  

Another thing important is notification.. Without it it is sometimes hard to catch up on things that are important.. 

#3 - Send Custom Notifications (for Key Events)

With Jira automation, you can easily send custom notifications for key events (like high-priority issues or blocked tasks), ensuring that stakeholders are aware of important changes without needing to check Jira constantly.

Example: When due date of an important task changed inform owners to check it and approve a new date. 

Very easy so far, right? So lets move to something more I would say .. dynamic? 

#4 - Auto-Generate Sub-Tasks (for Common Tasks)

Regular tasks like testing or documentation are often required whenever a larger issue is created. Automating the creation of these sub-tasks ensures that nothing is forgotten and that all the necessary steps are always included.

Example: Yes, creating multiple sub-tasks - just define how (could be a special transition or a different trigger) and set field values and you are ready to go - simple as that :) 

Again easy.. , so on the end something more "complex" since we need to use some variables and more advanced features but still showing how straightforward is to do things that were mostly reserved for some scripts or third party addons .. 

#5 - Auto-Log Work (or Time Tracking Updates)

Automating time logging can save time and ensure accurate records without requiring manual updates from your team members. 

Example: When starting work (e.g. moving ticket to In Progress) we are first (as a separate rule) catching up the date in a custom field when ticket is moved to a dedicated status and simply then when resolving (or stopping work) count time how long it was in this status to automatically log work for this person. It other words it works like a stopwatch that always make sure that exact time is logged in without counting it. 

Those are of course some examples that I choose, but it should show that not much is required to get you started with some basics and explore more (and do more). Automation is so powerful and almost everything is possible now. You can of course experiment based on your needs. Just a matter of determination to find a working solution. 

There is a nice library where everyone can play around and test creating rules which I encourage everyone to do so

https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/automation-template-library 

For hose that are already using automation.. Please share in comments below your experiences and maybe provide most popular (useful) automation from your perspective. We would all then benefit of learning together how automation can help save time and boost productivity!

Thanks!

[Morgan Watts]

I learned this from a community post, but I wanted to share it here as well.

This automation copies comments from a child work item (weird to say) to its parent’s comments.

My teams have found it useful because it helps them focus on their assigned tasks, and updates roll up. I only use it for a few processes, as automatically copying comments can be a nuisance depending on the requirements.

[Morgan Watts]

I appreciate the automatic time-tracking rules! Thanks for sharing those. Will be useful to use in the future.

[Mirek]

Thank you @Morgan Watts for sharing automation. Coping comments indeed might be useful especially when you divide work into sub-tasks and want to keep everything synced in parent. 

[LoganJaxon]

Thank you so much for the suggestion.