duplicate/ambiguous field names - what is expected Automation behavior?

[Nick Pan]

Given

• 2 custom fields with the same name and type (allowed in Company-managed).  Say, "My Custom Field" short text
• a project whose Create screen contains both those custom fields
• an active Automation Rule which, on Create, copies value from "My Custom Field" to "Description"

When

• I create an issue in that project with 
  • My Custom Field (#1) = "value 1"
  • My Custom Field (#2) = "value 2"

Then

• I see that the issue's Description field contains "value 1"

What is the logic for which "My Custom Field" gets copied?  For example, is it

• the one which is higher on the screen
• the one which was created earlier
• random 

[Filipi Lima · Accepted solution]

Hi, Nick,

Regardless of how the automation would behave in that scenario, I would steer away from embracing this ambiguity in your rule as it could change or not be as consistent as you think. My suspicion is that it would not be consistent as the information must be fetched from cache.

I would strongly recommend renaming one of the fields or use Advanced options within the rule to do the update based on a JSON, where you could specify the exact fields based on ID.

[Nick Pan]

Hi Filipi,

Thanks for your response.  

My suspicion is that it would not be consistent as the information must be fetched from cache.

I understand this to mean that the answer to my question is "random".  So I will accept the answer.

Cheers

Nick