Need help to create an automation to send an email 1 hour before Sprint is scheduled to start

[Carolyn White]

Frequently people get sidetracked and forget to close the sprint and start the next one, sometimes by a few days. This causes distorted and inaccurate data. How do I create an automation to send specific people an email reminder one hour before the sprint is scheduled to close/start?

The part that is causing the problem is the smart value in Then: Create variable. Neither ChatGPT or I can come up with something that works. 

So far I have:

Trigger: When: Scheduled (Every 3 weeks on Monday at 10:00AM)

IF Project = ABC

THEN: Create variable

 AND: Send email    

Suggestions?

[Bill Sheboy · Accepted solution]

Hi @Carolyn White 

First thing: In my opinion, I recommend not using any bot / AI-generated guidance for automation rule writing, including that provided by the built-in Atlassian guesser.  These tools apparently cannot access your individual Jira site's configuration, projects, etc. and so generic guesses may be unhelpful, at best, or perhaps not even work for your site.

For some things to try...

Are your sprints scheduled to always start (or end) on a specific cadence?  If so, just use that information in a Scheduled trigger rule in your specific project, and send the email.

If instead there is variation in the start / end cadence, the rule could run the schedule more frequently, and test when it is time to send the email.  Unfortunately, this rule would need to run hourly (on your working days) to ensure full coverage.  For example:

• trigger: scheduled, hourly and with no JQL in the trigger
• action: lookup work items, with JQL to get the items in the open sprint
• smart values condition: to confirm some results were found
• smart values condition: for the first item in the lookup, filter to get the active sprint's endDate, and compare to check if that is within your timeframe (i.e., within an hour)
• action: send the email reminder

Kind regards,
Bill

[Carolyn White]

Thanks Bill! I totally agree with you about not using AI for code as more often than not it provides something that isn't even an option. I only refer to it as a last resort and sometimes, rarely, but sometimes if provides a nugget that will steer me in a better direction.

After playing with this a bit more, I came to the same decision that you suggested - just send an email at the cadence of the sprint. That worked, moving on.

Thanks again for your suggestion!