Move issue to Estimated with Jira Automation

[Muriel Assmann]

Hello, 

I work in a big company and don't have admin rights to our whole Jira settings (e.g. I cannot make changes to the workflow steps), but I do have admin rights to the project I am part of. 

The workflow of our company's issues is that they always need to be estimated before moving to "in progress". In our project, however, it's not really necessary to estimate the issue (just log how long it took us to complete the task). The problem is that in our kanban board, we cannot simply move the issue from "open" to "in progress", because it has to be manually estimated beforehand.

I would like to create an automation that would automatically transition an issue to "estimated" once it's created. 

I tried a rule that didn't work:

When: issue created

If: our project's name

Then: Transition the issue to

Original Estimate (System) = 1d 

(the value doesn't really matter, it can be any number/time)

Does anyone have a better idea? Thanks!

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @Muriel Assmann 

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

Please provide a screen image that shows us your rule.

Also, please show us the details from the Audit Log for the rule execution.

You ask about transitioning the issue to "estimated" automatically. Is "estimated" a workflow status for your issues? Or is the requirement that the Original Estimate field have a value?

[Trudy Claspill]

It appears that you are using Jira Server or Jira Data Center, not Jira Cloud. Is that correct?

When you use the Transition action and use the Copy From Parent option to set the Status, that will work only if the issue you are operating against has a Parent issue. As per the documentation, that works only if the issue is a sub-task type of issue. If you are creating any other type of issue, this rule will not work to transition the status.

If you want to transition the status to "Estimated", then rather then specify "Copy from Parent" simply select "Estimated" in that field.

I had asked you to also provide the details from the Audit Log (see the link above the automation rule steps?) for an execution of the rule, but you did not provide it. If the rule is not doing what you expect, the first step in debugging is to look at the Audit Log to see what it reports.

[Muriel Assmann]

Hello @Trudy Claspill 

that worked! I simply selected "Estimated" and it was sufficient. Here's how the successful rule looks like: 

Sorry about the audit log, I forgot about it. I did take a look at it (and that's why I thought it was something related to the value -- 1h, 1d, etc.). But I couldn't really interpret it. I leave it here for information.

Thanks again!

Best,

Muriel

[Trudy Claspill]

I'm glad I could help.

If you question has been satisfactorily addressed please consider marking the Answer as Accepted.

The message in the log is telling you that the status you are trying to apply to the issue is not valid or there is no workflow transition path to it from the issue's current status. The issue's current status is shown (Open).

The message doesn't show the status you are trying to apply, which would be whatever value the automation is getting from the "Copy from parent" command.

[Muriel Assmann]

Hi @Trudy Claspill

Thanks for taking the time!

Yes, "estimated" is a workflow status: 

Here's a screenshot from my rule: