Automate Parent Assignment During New Issue Creation Based on Originating Issue Reporter

[Rebekka Reischl]

I have a specific use case I'd like to accomplish and haven't found other information that is especially applicable.

What I'd like to accomplish:

I've made a working manually triggered automation that creates a new issue. I'd like to add functionality so that the parent field on the new issue is populated with a specific epic based on a value in a different field on the originating issue.

I've considered a few approaches but have not gotten anything to work yet and would appreciate anyone's suggestions on how I can accomplish this.

Idea 1:

When originating Issue Reporter = a specific name (like John Smith,) new issue Epic = a specific existing Epic (like John Smith's Epic. )

(This would be ideal, but I have no idea at all how to go about this aside from assuming it would be something defined under "more options" in the create issue action)

Idea 2:

User input is collected on the manual trigger, that stamps Parent on the original issue, which can then be copied to the new issue. (I'd actually prefer not to add a parent to the original issue since it shouldn't have one, but it seemed like I had greater potential to be able to do it, except that I haven't managed to get the parent field to stamp anyhow.)

Thanks in advance!

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @Rebekka Reischl 

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

Regarding your first idea:

When originating Issue Reporter = a specific name (like John Smith,) new issue Epic = a specific existing Epic (like John Smith's Epic. )

Is the person that triggers the manual rule going to be inserted as the Reporter of the new issue?

Would there always be an Epic with the user's name in the summary? Would there ever be 0 or more than 1 such Epic.

Assuming there is alway 1 and only 1 such epic:

You could do this by getting the display name for the user that initiated the rule. The smart value for that would be:

{{initiator.displayName}}

You could use that to search for an Epic where that name appears in the Summary. You could do this through a Lookup Issues action with the JQL

issuetype=Epic and summary~"{{initiator.displayName}}"

Then in your Create Issue action in the Parent field you would type:

{{lookupIssues.first.key}}

...to set the Parent field to the issue key of the issue found by the Lookup Issue action.

Caveats:

- this rule, as shown, does not accommodate the scenario where there is no matching Epic found. The rule could be changed to manage that.

- this rule does not address the scenario where multiple matching Epics are found. If that might be the case then additional information is needed to specify how one would decide which was the correct Epic to use.

- the user name in the Epic Summary would need to match the Display Name associated with the user initiating the automation rule.

[Trudy Claspill]

If you want the Epic to be selected based on the Reporter of the issue from where the Automation Rule was triggered, then use

{{triggerIssue.reporter.displayName}}

instead of

{{initiator.displayName}}

[Rebekka Reischl]

@Trudy Claspill , thanks so much for the quick response!

I used {{triggerIssue.reporter.displayName}} along with your other suggestions and it worked! After trying to figure this out on my own for the last 2 days without success, you really made my day.

Thank you so much for the assistance!

[Trudy Claspill]

I'm so glad I could help!