Smart values and manual Actions

[Michael simon]

Hi Guy, 

i had an automation which used a smart value from a custom field:
{{issue.customfiledname}}

I had the automation "create subtask" whenever a Issue was created.

This subtask got filled with information from the normal task. 

Everything worked fine!

now i wanted to stop the automation to activte after creating an issue. I now wanted to switch it to "manuel trigger". So i took my existing automation and just replaced the trigger, nothing else. 

Now all my smart values are empty? 
How to fix this?

[Jack Brickey]

Hi @Michael simon , welcome to the community. 

What do you mean that you're smart values are empty exactly? Could you add a Log action component that records the results of the smart value. for example...

Then after executing the rule you can go into the audit log and assess what the value was at the time of execution.

Also feel free to share a screenshot of your rule so I can assess further. Finally, what exactly are you trying to accomplish with a manual rule. If you don't specify a JQL or look up issues component then the menu rule is intended to only run on a single issue from which you trigger the rule.

[Michael simon]

Hi, let me do some sceenshots. 

Maybe in different words: Just by changeing the Trigger, the automation doesn't work anymore. :(

In the past, the sub task got created whenever a task got created of a certain type. 

[Jack Brickey]

Hi @Michael simon , I missed your earlier reply as I have been on holiday. I am a bit confused by your rule and how it would work. You don't seem to be specifying the parent of the sub-task. Is the sub-task actually being created when you run the rule manually? When you previously had the rule working on issue create how were you specifying the parent?

could I ask you to define precisely your use case so that I might assist further? For example, it seems that you wish to manually run a rule that creates a subtask in some project on some issue. Are you adding the subtask to the issue from which the rule is executed. Then as for the Customfield are you inheriting this from the parent issue where the rule is executed? Understanding all of this would allow me to create a rule that I could share with you as an example.

[Michael simon]

Hi @Jack Brickey , 

in the past, the task creation triggered the action, maybe Jira was able to pull the parent from the trigger itself?

This is why I thought that I could just start the manual trigger directly inside from a parent task and Jira would know automatically, which task will be the parent. 

What i would like to do, is to use the manual trigger to create sub-tasks. 

And this already works partially.

The Sub-Tasks get created under the correct parent task, after clicking the manual trigger.

But I want to inherit the information from the parent task too, in order to use it in the sub-tasks. But here the automation can't find the information of the parent task and values remain empty.

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Michael simon 

Adding to Jack's questions to try to help...You describe a rule used to add subtasks to an issue with a manual trigger, or simplified like this:

• trigger: manual
• action: add sub-task (to the trigger issue), and copy some fields from the trigger issue to the new sub-task

You also note the "parent"; what do you mean by "parent"?

The parent of a sub-task is an issue...which would be the trigger issue for your rule.

Do you instead mean the parent of the trigger issue?

Kind regards,
Bill

[Michael simon]

Hi, I somehow solved it. 

I used {{issuue.customfieldname}} all this time. But I started to use it on other issue-types as well. Then it seems to be not a unique custom field anymore. 

I started to use the custom field ID instead of the name and now it works. 

So it seems to not to have anything to do with the trigger, but with the unique naming of a custom field, between different issue-types. 

But thanks for your help! It kept me thinking. 

[Jack Brickey]

Interesting...can you share your custom field name?

[Michael simon]

No idea why this is happening?