Automation: Cloning description from a template issue

[Allan Ngo]

We have a software team where we are trying to assist with adhering more to Definition of Ready/Done (DoR/DoD) checklists.

We have created a template story and would like to use this as a template to populate any new issues.

This exists within a separate story's description, with HTML/rich text.

I cannot seem to find a way to update the description of a new ticket, with that of a specific other unrelated ticket.

(Is a hack/workaround available to:

- link any new tickets to the template

- clone the description over

- then unlink the tickets?

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @Allan Ngo 

You might want to consider instead the work around described in these two post for creating template text for a Description field.

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Core-Server-questions/How-to-create-a-template-for-issue-description/qaq-p/1041636

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-questions/Default-text-for-Description-field-on-Jira-Cloud/qaq-p/785597

That results in the template text being present when the user starts the Create Issue action.

For the idea you're proposing, would you be replacing the text originally put into the new issue with the text from the "template" issue, or would you be appending that "template" text?

I think you could execute your proposal using an Automation rule. However, if you have the "template" issue in a different project than the issues being created, then it would have to be a Global Rule, and that would make each run count against your Global Rule Execution limit. 

[Allan Ngo]

Hi Trudy,

Thanks for the quick reply.

The idea I had assumed was the latter - that we could not replace the text from the point of creation and that we have to amend the template after creation.

Ideally it would be the former, where it gets populated prior to creating the issue.

Thanks for the links, I think that should do it - I'll need to do more digging with our client's JIRA admin however ( as we don't own the instance ).

Luckily our template ticket is within the same project and I appreciate the callout on the Global Rule!

Thanks