Automation Scheduled - Change Run dates

[Josh Maurer]

Have automations that run every week. However we sometimes need to change when the schedule time is. For instance:

Orginal Automation:

Automation Created : 11/25
When Scheduled: Every 2 Weeks @ 8AM

(This then shows the next 10 runs as 11/28, 12/12, 12/26, etc...)

This is where my problem comes.

They don't match up with when I would like this to actually start.
The date I would like the first run to happen 12/5 then every 2 weeks from then.

How do I change this date other than creating a new automation on that week?

[jeremyn]

We just discovered that if you export the rule the rule start date is in the JSON output.

You can manually modify that data and import the rule again, effectively moving the start date from today to any time in the past.

We wanted to use automations for yearly license renewal reminders, doing it this way means we can create all of the automations at once and set each automation to the renewal time frame we want.

We also discovered that enabling/disabling it doesn't change the modified start date, however changing the scheduling does reset it to today.

[Trudy Claspill]

That is a great discovery! Thanks for sharing!

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Josh Maurer 

This is a really good question!

If you don't specify a day of week for the rule to run on, it will assume you mean you want the rule to run every two weeks starting from the date you created the rule.

If you do specify a day of week...

If you pick today or a day earlier in the week, it seems to assume you want to start on that day of week in the second calendar week from when you create the rule. For example if I create a rule today and select Monday for the day of week, the first run date is Jan. 9.

If you pick a dat that is later in the week, then it seems to assume you want to start the rule running this week. For example if I pick Wednesday, the first run date is Dec. 28.

I think you would have to initially create the rule schedule, and then go back and edit the schedule on subsequent days until you were on the right current date to get it to start on the future date you want.

There doesn't appear to be a way to specify the first date when you want the rule to start being triggered, but I'm going to keep researching this.

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Josh Maurer 

Yes, and...to Trudy's answer:

I do not believe there is a built-in way to do this with a single expression.  Sometimes things like this are done with either multiple chron expressions or with a script/code logic.

One work-around for a Jira automation rule would be:

• run the rule on a more frequent, daily schedule
• in an advanced compare condition...
• using the date/time function diff(), compute the difference between now and your known date in days
• use the modulo operator on the diff() result with your desired interval (.i.e. 7 days) and only proceed if the remainder is zero

Kind regards,
Bill

[Josh Maurer]

Thank You all for the information. I will have to play around with that. I believe this should be a feature Jira should add for scheduled triggers.

[Trudy Claspill]

@Josh Maurer 

I recommend that you open a support case with Atlassian Support to make that suggestion or find out if they already have it in their backlog.

https://support.atlassian.com/contact/#/

If you get a link to the suggestion, please post it back here.

[Lauren Santarossa]

Did this feature idea progress at all?

We're currently going through something similar for recurring BAU tasks, we want to trigger a bi-yearly and yearly automation starting from 1 Jan 2024, but can't work out how to set the 'future' trigger date, as there is no 'start rule from' function