How can I automatically add watchers to the assignee of a linked issue?

[Dung Ngo]

Hi everyone,

Is there a way to add assignee of a linked issue as a watcher in your ticket?

For example:

There's ticket A with assignee X

There's ticket B with assignee Y

Ticket A blocks ticket B

Is there any way that Jira can automatically add Y as a watcher in ticket A (so that they will be notified with any updates from the ticket that is blocking their work)?

[Mikael Sandberg · Accepted solution]

Hi @Dung Ngo,

Welcome to Atlassian Community!

Yes, you can do this using automation by triggering on when you link the tickets to add users as watchers. Something like this will do it:

 

[Jack Brickey]

for the action you can use smart values to add the watcher. I believe it would be as below, but that needs to be tested and validated

{{initiator.assignee}}

[Dung Ngo]

Thanks @Mikael Sandberg and @Jack Brickey for your quick replies. Our admin set up the rule like this rule as below but it doesn't work as expected (no watcher's added). 

 

I notice that there's a check box in the rule details "Check to allow other rule actions to trigger this rule. Only enable this if you need this rule to execute in response to another rule" => Do we need to check that box in order for the rule to run?

[Mikael Sandberg]

That checkbox only has to enabled if you have other automations that interact with your issues, like when you have one that transitions an issue to a new status, which triggers a second automation related to that new status. 

What you need to check is which of the two link types you used, because the automation would only add watchers to issues that have the inward link of "is blocked by". Also check the audit log to see if the automation triggered, and if so, it will also tell you why the watchers was not added.