I am looking for a working smart value for an automation rule to set watcher

[Rixta Padeken]

Hi, 

I know it is not possible to find the @ mentioned user in general. I would like to create an automation rule, where in the comments is searched for any accountId (so far it worked) and then set these accountid as watcher. Unfortunately I am not able to find the right smart value or any working smart value except {{comment.author}}. 

My query starts with:

{{comment.body}} contains regex {{assignee.accountid}}

Now I need the "Add watcher" part.

Can anybody help we with this issue?

[Becky Klein]

Is the @mention trigger still in the works?

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Becky Klein 

I found these for user and issue mention in the backlog: 

• https://codebarrel.atlassian.net/browse/AUT-216
• https://codebarrel.atlassian.net/browse/AUT-955

Best regards,
Bill

[Petter Gonçalves]

Hello @Rixta Padeken

Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

Per your description, I understand that you would like to automatically add a user as a watcher when he is @mentioned in a comment on the issue. Is that correct?

Indeed, the Automation for Jira does not have a simple way to configure it, but we have the following feature request open to allow @mention to be selected as a trigger in automation rules:

@mention trigger 

We suggest keeping an eye on that suggestion to receive any updates about that.

For now, the only way you can do this is to use regular expression matching. So you could set up a rule as below:

• Trigger: Issue commented

• Compare condition:

  • First value:

    {{comment.body}}

  • Matches

  • Second value:

    .*\[\~.*\].*

• Action: Manage watchers add users with this smart-value -

  {{comment.body.match(".*\[\~(.*)\].*")}}

Basically. when a comment is added and a user is mentioned, this is inserted into the comment as [~username], so the smart-value above extracts the username via a regular expression match. You can check more details about this in the documentation below:

Automation conditions 

A limitation of this approach is that it will only add one user as the watcher (if multiple users are mentioned in a comment). There's no work-around for this at the moment.

Let us know if you have any questions.

[Rixta Padeken]

Hello Petter,

thank you for your fast respond, unfortunatelly it is not working. The picture shows the audit log of the automation rule, after I mentioned somebody in a comment. The user is found but anyhow the watcher cannot be set via accountid? I don't really get it.

[Deleted user]

@Petter Gonçalves it's not working for me either, I have the same issue than @Rixta Padeken .

Can you please provide with a working solution ?

Thanks !

Nicolas

[YY Brother]

yeah, it doesn't work for me either.

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi community!

As often is the case for things not built-in for automation rules, you will need to experiment to learn what is possible.  For example this worked for me after some experimentation:

• trigger: issue commented
• action: create a variable, and use text functions and regular expressions to extract the mentioned users account id values.  Let's call the variable varAddWatcher

{{issue.comments.last.body.match("(accountid:.*)]").remove("accountid:")}}

• condition: advanced compare to check if there were any mentions by checking for a non-empty varAddWatcher
• action: add watcher using varAddWatcher

This works for one mention in the comment.  If you expect multiple people to be mentioned, the rule would need to be altered to treat varAddWatcher as a list, and branch over it to add watchers.

Kind regards,
Bill

[YY Brother]

it doesn't work 

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @YY Brother 

Your comments of "it doesn't work" to not provide enough context for the community to offer help.  I suggest that you try:

• Consider creating your own/new question if you believe that will improve visibility to the question.  Link to other posts if you believe that will help.
• Explain what problem you are trying to solve
• Explain what have you tried thus far to solve the problem
• Add an image of your complete automation rule.  If necessary, add images of the details of the components to make the clear.
• Add an image of your audit log from the rule execution
• Explain how the rule does not work as you expect

If that is not possible, please instead consider asking your site admin to submit a ticket to Atlassian support for assistance.  You may do that here if you are using a paid license for Jira: https://support.atlassian.com/contact/#/

[YY Brother]

• action: create a variable, and use text functions and regular expressions to extract the mentioned users account id values.  Let's call the variable varAddWatcher  

==> there is no such jira automation aciton. I tried to add the code as the watcher and the result had an error like  

{{issue.comments.last.body.match("(accountid:.*)]").remove("accountid:")}}

 

[Bill Sheboy]

The Create Variable action only exists in Jira Cloud automation rules.  Are you using Jira Server/Data Center?

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/differences-between-automation-in-jira-server-and-jira-cloud/

If so, you could try performing the comment parsing and test all at once in the advanced compare condition.

I also respectfully suggest you try writing values to the audit log to confirm if your string parsing is returning the values you expect...before trying to change the watcher field.

[YY Brother]

It's really a pity that I don't use Cloud. Thanks for your sugggestion anyway.