An automation rule has started to fail after 2 years

[Åse Nordberg]

Hello everybody!

Does anyone have any idea why one of my automation rules has started to fail (audit log says "Some errors")? It has been used for over two years without any problem.

The problem started this morning and I haven't done any configurations in a while.

I went through the audit log and chose one story (without an epic), that triggered the rule last week without action and without any problem, and changed it's status to "Open" and then to "In progress" and this time the rule failed. Why? :)

Thanks!!

[Bill Sheboy · Accepted solution]

Hi @Åse Nordberg 

I agree with other posters this symptom may be related to the epic field changes.  The earliest posts about those changes indicated Atlassian was going to auto-magically update rules in customers sites.  However I wonder if there is some problem in the the over-loading of the parent field for epics in the context of automation rules.

So a couple possible suggestions (in addition to letting Atlassian Support know about this):

• brute force
  • Change the branch type from Epic (Parent) to JQL to explicitly control the branch behavior, like this:
    • key = {{triggerIssue.parent.key}} AND issueType = Epic
• assume the rule is glitched and replace it
  • Re-create the rule from scratch, exactly as it is now, disabling the existing rule
  • The new rule may be implemented differently, behind the scenes, since we are now after the epic field changes went live.  (I suppose this could be confirmed by exporting both rules and comparing their JSON.)
  • And...re-creating a misbehaving rule can help in other circumstances as rules which have been edited too many times can occasionally get bent/broken

Kind regards,
Bill

[Åse Nordberg]

@Bill Sheboy Thanks for your suggestions - I will start with number two I think :). It's about 8 am here in Sweden and I got the first notification mail while writing this.

So grateful for this community as I'm the only admin in our instance and have difficulties finding time to catch up with all features/changing coming up

[Joel Charlebois · Accepted solution]

Was given this via Support Chat: https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/upcoming-changes-epic-link-replaced-with-parent/#Updates-to-automation

[Åse Nordberg]

@joel charlebois Thanks, I haven't seen that. Of course, I realize now :), my problems are connected to these changes around epic-link/parent-link. Thanks again for your help.

[Åse Nordberg]

Hello again!
I have had a chat with Atlassian support and after some tests of the automation rule we found out that disabling / enabling solved the problem. 

[Bill Sheboy]

Thanks, @Åse Nordberg 

That seems to suggest that the underlying implementation of that branch type changed after those changes for epic fields went live.  Good to know!

[Armitha Reddy Toorpu Ceema]

Hi Ase,

May be sometimes there is a changes from Atlassian side.

It is best if you raise a support ticket to Atlassian.

Thanks,

Armitha.

[Åse Nordberg]

Yes, I think so too. Thanks for your help!

[Armitha Reddy Toorpu Ceema]

Hi Ase,

The error is due to condition mismatch, will you please check the issue which is mentioned in error log SKL-12263 whether this issue matching condition or not which you mentioned in Automatioin.

Thanks,

Armitha.

[Åse Nordberg]

The issue is a bug (SKL-12263) and it doesn't belong to an Epic.

The thing is that the rule has worked fine for two years, without any changes from my side (and I'm the only admin), until this morning.

The rule has handled (triggered) all issue types with or without an epic link. 

The only reason I can see now is that something has change within Atlassian. 

[Armitha Reddy Toorpu Ceema]

Hi Ase,

If it possible, will you please attach the error screenshot. So that will understand more about your error.

Thanks,

Armitha.

[Åse Nordberg]

Hi Armitha!

Here is a screenshot, as you can see there is a lot of errors today and it all started this morning after two years of running without any errors at all.

[Geethanjali Katagani]

Hi Ase,

If you try, your trigger story has a different parent issue type or else this automation will occur even if there is no parent issue.

In your case ,i think the automation has failed because there is no parent(Epic) issue.

let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks,

Geethanjali

[Åse Nordberg]

Hi, the story that triggered the rule today, like last week, has no parent. True.

But, the difference between today and last week is that the automation rule failed today.

It's kind of weird as this rule has been active for two years without any changes and without any errors.