Automation for Jira - Populate Approvers with Project Role?

[Fabian Dengel]

Hello all

I am looking to use Automation for Jira to set the Approvers to all members of a project role, but https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/jira-smart-values-projects/ seems lacking this particular case.

I assume I would need to set up a variable and use a smart value? Any hints on how to achieve this? The "Edit issue" action only supports users and copying values from existing issues.

Many thanks in advance!

[Bill Sheboy · Accepted solution]

Hi @Fabian Dengel 

One way to do this would be to call the REST API from a rule to gather the accountId values of people in the role, and then assign them as approvers with a JSON edit.

If you want to try that, here are some references to help:

• how to call the REST API from a rule https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-articles/Automation-for-Jira-Send-web-request-using-Jira-REST-API/ba-p/1443828
• the REST API method needed is https://docs.atlassian.com/software/jira/docs/api/REST/1000.824.0/#api/2/project/{projectIdOrKey}/role-getProjectRole
• how to use the advanced edit with JSON https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/advanced-field-editing-using-json/

Kind regards,
Bill

[Bill Sheboy]

 Hi, Fabian.

You are close with that starting point...you will need the JSON for a multi-select user field and the account id values from the response using with an iterator.

{
  "fields": {
    "Approvers": [ {{#webResponse.body.actors}} { "id":"{{actorUser.accountId}}" }{{^last}}, {{/}}{{/}} ],
  }
}

If that does not work, please try writing the expression to the audit log to see what is happening.

[Fabian Dengel]

Hey @Bill Sheboy 

Many thanks for providing the iterator! Unfortunately Automation for Jira claimed, the output is not a valid JSON...So I ran it through a JSON validator and seems the very last comma after the square bracked was the culprit, removed it and voilà: Issues edited successfully!

This is the working expression based on your response:

{ "fields": { "Approvers": [ {{#webResponse.body.actors}} { "id":"{{actorUser.accountId}}" }{{^last}}, {{/}}{{/}} ] }}

Thanks again for your support, we made it work in true community fashion so cheers to that :) 

[Bill Sheboy]

Well done, and that is interesting!  I have found the rule parsing inconsistent in accepting a trailing comma for updates. 

Please note I added the conditional processing with {{^last}}, {{/}} handling as I know extra commas inside the list items fail.

[Karyna Tyrnavska _SaaSJet]

Hi, @Fabian Dengel !

If you`re ok with Jira plug-ins, try out Business Process Manager. My team has developed this plug-in to manage and optimize complete processes involving different departments and several operations.

Read more about the approval process in BPM in the article or our documentation

[Fabian Dengel]

Hi @Karyna Tyrnavska _SaaSJet 

Thanks for the proposal, as you can see we managed at least my use-case with out-of-the-box tooling :)

On that note: I was going to try your app, but it seems your demo does not work (at least when I opened the demo link https://saasjettest.atlassian.net/plugins/servlet/ac/bpm-demo/bpm-main-page-demo?project.key=BPM&project.id=10007 it ran into an error)

Have a good day and kind regards
Fabian

[Fabian Dengel]

Hey @Bill Sheboy 

Many thanks for your support, much appreciated!

I was able to create the request and retrieve the project role members, however I am stuck at transforming the returned accountIds into a usable JSON to populate the Approvers.

Could you give me another hint on this one?

First, I am creating a smart value variable "roleMembers" from the web request like this:

{{webResponse.body.actors}}

 When I log the value of this request I receive the following (accountIds obfuscated, but syntax identical):

{id=12951, displayName=Fabian (TEST EXTERNAL), type=atlassian-user-role-actor, actorUser={accountId=qm:xxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxx:xxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxx}}, {id=12952, displayName=Fabian (TEST), type=atlassian-user-role-actor, actorUser={accountId=qm:xxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxx:xxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxx}}, {id=12953, displayName=Fabian Dengel, type=atlassian-user-role-actor, actorUser={accountId=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx}}

 How would I need to transform this in the EDIT action to be accepted?

{
"fields": {
"Approvers": "{{roleMembers")}}",
}
}

I fiddled around with ".asJsonObject" and ".asJsonArray" but my knowledge in that area is lacking and I could not get it to work. I feel I am close, but no cigar :)

Thanks again for pointing me in the right direction!