Email automation not sending to assignee in jira service management, team-managed project.

[Vanessa Scherstrom]

I have a scheduled automation for my team-managed, Jira service-management project to send an email to the assignee if they have an issue in the "waiting for approval status" every morning. This project is only for PTO requests for a small staff of people.  When I look in the audit log it says,  SEND EMAIL As there is no issue present, cannot get the value of the field: assignee Unable to send the email as the recipient's email address wasn't provided I have it set up to send to "Assignee" and am not sure why it won't pick up from that field. I know team managed projects have issues with automations for custom user picker field, but this is not a custom field.  It is standard.  

[Selena Brown]

Hi, @Trudy Claspill , :)  Thank you for the solution if it's for one person per issue.

What if I do want to send one message to each unique person with all their issues listed in the one message?

[Selena Brown]

I meant to add this as a reply and now cannot delete it... but still interested if you know a solution! :)

Or even, if I want to send one email to all the people from all the issues with a list of the issues?  Sort of a weekly stakeholder update - 1 email, X # of people, 1 list.

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Vanessa Scherstrom 

When asking for help with an Automation rule that is not operating as expected it will help us help you more effectively if you provide the following:

1. Screen images that show your complete rule.

2. Screen images of the step details for any action, condition, or branch that is relevant to your problem. In this case, the Send Email action would be important.

3. Since you are using a Scheduled trigger, show us the details of that trigger.

4. Screen images of the output in the Audit Log.

Also, is the rule a single-project scoped rule or multiple- or global-project scoped rule?

[Vanessa Scherstrom]

Initially I did include pics...three times, but nothing under the category of service management was posting.  A support ticket was created for the my questions not posting to the community.  Other categories posted but those did not have pics so I thought that might be the issue. When I posted this one to Jira service-management questions without the pictures attached, it posted.  So I just wanted to get the question in front of the community to start with and add the pictures after it actually posted.  I replied to the ticket with my findings btw so they could fix the issue. 

Now onto MY issue and (finally! :)) pics

[Vanessa Scherstrom]

This is team-managed project.  Doesn't that mean that all rules are just for this project or can they be shared?  I would say single project rule. below is the audit log. 

[Trudy Claspill]

Thank you for the additional information.

If you created the rule from within the Project Settings > Automation feature, then the scope is limited to that one project.

The reason for the failure is that your use of Assignee as the recipient requires that an issue be "in context" in the rule. There are multiple ways to get an issue "in context" for future actions in the rule.

With a Scheduled rule trigger you can specify a JQL directly in the trigger. The rule will then execute each of the actions in the rule for each issue found by the JQL in the trigger.

When you use a Lookup Issues action, that does not actually put any of the resulting issues "in context" to be operated on by the next actions in the rule. Extra steps need to be taken to put an issue "in context" in that case.

The method to fix the rule depends on what you want to accomplish with the rule.

Is your goal to send one message for each issue, or send one message to each unique Assignee with all their issues listed in the one message?

[Vanessa Scherstrom]

Goal is to send an email to any Assignee who has an issue in "Waiting for approval" every morning.  They should be getting them out ASAP so anything still in that status should get an email reminder. 

[Trudy Claspill]

I recommend you delete the Lookup Issues action and instead put the JQL you are using there into the Scheduled trigger. You'll find a checkbox at the bottom of the trigger configuration.

After you check that box you'll get a field for entering the JQL, and a checkbox below it.

If you want to send the email every day until the status of the issue is changed, then uncheck the box below he JQL field.

For each issue that matches your JQL, the rule will attempt to send an email to the Assignee. If the Assignee field is blank, the email will not be sent.

You will also need to change the content of your email.

In the Subject line replace {{lookupIssues.key}} with {{issue.key}}

Which user are you trying to identify with {{initiator.displayName}}? 

In the context of an automation rule, "initiator" is the user that triggers the rule. Since this is a Scheduled rule the initiator would be "Automation for Jira". If you are trying to provide the name of the Reporter of the issue, then you need to instead use {{issue.reporter.displayName}}

[Trudy Claspill]

What if I do want to send one message to each unique person with all their issues listed in the one message?

Here is the rule for that requirement.

To achieve this I would pull the JQL out of the trigger and add a Lookup Issues action. Add to this lookup criteria to only retrieve issues that have an Assignee value.(1) 

Confirm that some issues were found (2). The size attribute gives you the number of items in a list, and a Lookup Issues action returns a list of issues.

Then branch on each distinct Assignee in the list of found issues (3).

Execute another lookup to find just the issues for that Assignee (4).

Send an email that will list out the issues found in that second lookup (5).

The syntax you see in the content instructs the rule to print the issue key and summary for each issue in the Lookup Issues list.

If my responses have helped you achieve your requirements, please consider clicking on the Accept Answer button above my responses to mark your Question as Solved.

[Selena Brown]

Thank you! I'm going to try this out tomorrow. :)