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Rule not copying Reporter and Assignee for linked issues

Jeffrey Li
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August 11, 2025

This rule is not copying the Reporter and Assignee from the parent ticket. What am I doing wrong?

Linked Issues.png

3 answers

1 accepted

0 votes
Answer accepted
Thorsten Letschert _Decadis AG_
Community Champion
August 11, 2025

@Jeffrey Li Reposting as a standalone answer for visibility (feel free to accept):

After some trial and error with the snippets provided, I found a behavior that might explain your problem.

Here’s what I found:

  • Scenario: I’m in work item A and link to work item B.

  • Using the Work item linked trigger, the source work item (from which the data is copied) is B.

  • So instead of copying from A → B, the system tries to copy in the opposite direction (B → A), pulling information rather than pushing it.

Configure this using the destination work item to copy from A to B (push data). Here’s the configuration I used that worked for me:

 community_automation_linked-copy.PNG

This reversed perspective on “source” and “destination” might save some head-scratching if your setup isn’t behaving as expected.

Pro tip: Expanding on the single steps within the audit log helped narrow this down.

Regards,
Thorsten

1 vote
Rudy Holtkamp
Community Champion
August 11, 2025

Hi @Jeffrey Li ,

Change the condition to a smart value condition:

{{triggerissue.assignee}} is not empty

Then in the Edit section select assignee and reporter in one action and add copy from trigger work item, see picture below

image.png

Rudy Holtkamp
Community Champion
August 11, 2025

And indeed make sure the scope contains both the trigger work item project as the linked work item project(s).

Thorsten Letschert _Decadis AG_
Community Champion
August 11, 2025

@Rudy Holtkamp, the setup and explanation look good.

@Jeffrey Li, if this is not working as expected, would you mind sharing the audit log when the rule is executed?

Jeffrey Li
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August 11, 2025

I tried making the change and this didnt work either. Log shows that "No Actions Performed", below are the details.

Audit Log.png

The trigger event Assignee is populated with my name, so it is definitely not empty.

Thorsten Letschert _Decadis AG_
Community Champion
August 11, 2025

@Jeffrey Li Played around a bit with the configuration snippets provided here and, browsing through the audit log, ran into a behaviour that's (at least to me) a bit counter-intuitive, but that might explain your problem:

  • Given I'm in work item A and linking to work item B
  • The source work item (the one I'm copying from) is, in fact, B
  • So instead of copying from A to B, I'm copying (or trying to copy) vice versa ('pulling' information)

To copy from A to B in this case (or to 'push' the information), I used this configuration with the destination work item:

community_automation_linked-copy.PNG

Does this help?

Jeffrey Li
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August 11, 2025

Yes, exactly this! @Thorsten Letschert _Decadis AG_ It defies logic that the newly created item is actually the trigger ticket rather than the destination ticket.

 

Thanks for helping!

0 votes
Jeroen Poismans
Community Champion
August 11, 2025

Hi Jeffrey and welcome!

This can have several reasons, but fist of all I would check whether the users you want to copy have the correct permissions in the target project.

Some reasons:

  • Assignee user does not have Assignable permission.
  • Reporter user must have Browse project permission.
  • Role actor (if not Automation for Jira) does not have permission to Modify reporter or to edit the issue.

Can you check these?

Jeffrey Li
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August 11, 2025

Permissions are correct. I was using my own name (setup as an admin) as the test issue to try to validate the rule. When creating a new linked issue, the issue will use my name in the Reporter field instead of the original ticket "reporter", and Assignee is defaulting to "Unassigned".

Jeroen Poismans
Community Champion
August 11, 2025

Hi,

Being an admin does not necessarily mean that you can do everything in a project. The project role(s) your user is in, in the target project does also need the correct permissions via the permission scheme linked to the target project.

On the other hand, can you share more detail of your Edit issue steps? You can also do this in 1 step btw, you don't need an edit step per field. Now that I think of it, might also be a cause (because of not re-fetching data). But let's handle one thing at a time and look at your edit steps first.

Jeffrey Li
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August 11, 2025

Copy Assignee.pngCopy Reporter.png

 

I have edit issues in all the projects.

Jeffrey Li
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August 11, 2025

I've tried copy from trigger work event as the option as well, and its the same result.

Jeroen Poismans
Community Champion
August 11, 2025

What is the Scope of your rule? Is it Global, does it have scope in Source and target projects?

Jeroen Poismans
Community Champion
August 11, 2025

Here is one last thing: be aware of the link direction! For example:

Is caused by vs Causes

If you say: Copy from Trigger work item. This is determined by how the link is created. If you notice it does not work with 1 link direction, try the other way around and you might see the fields being copied correctly.

Jeffrey Li
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August 11, 2025

This will become a project rule, which I can add a condition for once this starts working for the global level. Issue I have is its not even working at a global level.

abelalia87
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August 11, 2025

@Jeffrey Li 

When I have a problem with an automation I am building and I am not sure where the problem is, I try to build it as a manual trigger automation. For your case I would test it on an already linked ticket, then try the different combinations that you are trying to achieve, with the reporter and assignee fields. When everything seems to be working fine make an automation with your desired trigger, for you case when issues are linked.

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