Integration with Slack Workflows - Description with New Line Failing

[Xiaolu Wen]

I am using the "Create an issue" Jira Cloud step in a Slack Workflow. I'm trying to take variables from a filled out form and create the Jira Description.

I noticed that if I put all the variables in the same line, separated by spaces or words, the integration works as expected. But, if I try to separate out the variables with a newline or an empty line, then the integration fails, and Slackbot will give me the following message:

This workflow didn't finish. We couldn't complete the Create an issue step:

This happened because there's a problem with the information you provided.

You can reach out to the collaborators for help. You'll find them in the settings for this workflow.

I've attached a screenshot of what I am trying to do that is failing the workflow.

The follow screenshot shows that without the newline, it will work.

Is this a bug, or is there something that I am not doing properly with trying to use newlines?

System information: Apple M1 Macbook Pro, macOS Ventura 13.5, Slack Version 4.33.84

[Demetris · Accepted solution]

I'm having the exact same issue, so probably not something you're doing wrong!

I have also found that it doesn't matter where the newline character is, as even if it's in the input provided by a user in the form, the workflow will still fail with the error.

Something that might help in your case, as it seems that you only have newlines in the Description field (rather than the user answers themselves) is to use \n instead of Enter to separate the two answers, as I've found that passes through the workflow and results in a newline in the created ticket.

But ideally someone from Atlassian should look into this bug in their integration!

[Xiaolu Wen]

Oh man, that's extremely unfortunate. I did have some of my form fields be long answers where users can enter in new lines. I will work around this by changing the fields to short answer fields... which is extremely inconvenient for users entering in long text all on one line.

Thanks so much for the hint on `/n` !

I do hope that Atlassian can comment on this with an answer on roadmap for fixing the bug or some workaround such that we can make this integration much easier to use for both admins and users of the Slack+Jira workflow.

[Alastair Wilkinson]

Just as an FYI, the connector steps in the new Slack workflow builder are built by Slack, not any of the actual vendors like Atlassian.  It is on Slack to fix the issues.

[Xiaolu Wen]

Thanks for the engagement!

My team has submitted a ticket through our Slack support and received the response:

Unfortunately you have run into a known bug our team is aware of and actively working on.

I encourage everyone else who is seeing this thread that is experiencing this to submit a ticket through your Slack support channel as well!

[Evn Tomeny [Appfire]]

The other nice benefit of submitting the issue to Slack is that they'll notify you directly when they fix it.

[Haris Vugdalic]

Any updates from Slack on this? I just ran into this issue setting up a workflow to simplify moving the contents into a JIRA issue and was met with this error.

[Xiaolu Wen]

Yep. We got an update on our ticket in August 2023 that what was reported in our original bug ticket was fixed. The integration has been working fine for our workflows so far with the new line and single quote characters. If there are other characters that are not accepted by the workflow or escaped properly, again, I suggest you reach out through Slack Support to submit a bug ticket.

[Haris Vugdalic]

Great, thanks for the response. I scrapped the 'create an issue' step altogether for now as I'm unable to properly diagnose the problem from such a generic error on slack. I'm wondering if the additional required fields on JIRA are preventing the step from proceeding. This was the only thread I could find in regards to the issue so who knows. Maybe others are still struggling with this integration and can chime in.

[Haris Vugdalic]

For anyone who might run across this thread, I reached out to Slack and they confirmed that their Jira connector for Slack currently does not support required custom fields. Since our Jira issuetype requires certain custom fields upon creation we were unable to have workflows create issues for us. This is a bug that Slack is tracking.

[Nicolas Peralta]

Same happen to me. I realized that special character (new lines, quotations, etc) are not allowed to use in summary or issue description. I have talked with Slack and they said that Atlassian is the owner and have to fix it. 

[Andrés Velasco]

I am having the same problema with "quotes" :(

[Zachary Wentworth]

This workflow step is pretty much unusable.

[Zachary Wentworth]

I was able to resolve this by avoiding Slack’s RTF-based fields and opting for paragraph fields for data collection.

[Zachary Wentworth]

The step still produces errors and is too picky about input.
We are no longer using this tool.

[Anastasia Gourina]

HI All,

I have also been facing the same issue! Thank you for the advice!

Just have a question regarding the Slack workflow. Does anyone knows if the person integrating with the Slack channel/workflow needs a Jira Software license for the information to go to Jira?

Is there any licensing limitation?

Thanks!

[GC]

From my understanding, the default is that the workflow creator is the default ticket creator in Jira and their account is the one used thus bypassing the need for every person to have a Jira account 

Not sure whether this helps as it might cause an issue to have all tickets 'raised' by the same person in Jira? Makes it a little harder to track where it originated from

We changed this so that the person triggering the creation in Slack was also then shown as the creator in Jira. This also created some governance as only people with ticket creation permissions in Jira for that project could trigger the action.

But yes, whatever your setting - there has to be an Atlassian account with ticket creation permissions attached to the workflow 

[Anastasia Gourina]

Hmmm, interesting... How did you guys change the config?

"We changed this so that the person triggering the creation in Slack was also then shown as the creator in Jira."