Are there future plans to add notifications within the Jira board itself via Jira automation?

[Connor Skiro]

For example, if there is a story that has subtasks that are not resolved, and a user tries to move the parent to "Done", would it be possible to notify the user within the board itself telling the user that the reason the story was not moved to "Done" is because the subtasks need to be resolved first?

[John Funk · Accepted solution]

Hi Connor - I don't know that Automation will ever evolve into Workflow management types of functions, but I'll let the Atlassian folks speak to that. 

In the meantime, you can use an add-on to do that - something like JMWE or ScriptRunner should do the trick. 

There is already a built in Condition function to workflows that prevent the parent from moving, but there are no messages that are given such as there is with Validators. So the add-on is only needed for the messaging part. 

[Connor Skiro]

Hey John, 

Thank you for taking the time to answer my question, I appreciate it! On second thought, I realized the above example is quite trivial with the solution you mentioned, and I should have picked another use case.

The topic of notifications came up during one of my Jira Automation Labs sessions and I wasn't sure if that was even on the roadmap or not. 

The workaround we ended up using for notifying the user was via email, Slack, or Teams. However, the experience to have to go to another application to get some error messaging is not the best UX.

I do appreciate the response and for the original example I used, you're absolutely right. JMWE or ScriptRunner are the ways to go.

Best, 
Connor

[John Funk]

Automation can send an email notification as such but won't stop the process of the workflow. Maybe I misunderstood the initial question. But it also won't know if the user tried something and was not successful. Therefore, there was no action that actually happened (was accomplished) for Automation to fire. 

I hope that helps a little more. 

[Connor Skiro]

I apologize for the confusion, I was trying to keep it pretty general while using a simple example.

For better context, this topic of notifications revolved around GDPR and HIPAA compliance. 

Now that I'm thinking about it though, Validators may just be the best approach for a more regulated workflow/process.