automation: create variable using statusCategoryChangeDate

[Dylan Willis]

I am trying to leverage the duration of time since an issue changed status categories in the creation of a different variable. If we estimate that an issue will take 4 days to complete and the issue has been in progress for 2 days already, I want to capture these variables so that I can see the amount of time left based on our estimates. 

I want the below variable to work:

{{issue.statuscategorychangedate.shortDate}}

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @Dylan Willis 

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

Although the field content appears to be a date/time, it seems that the field itself is treated like a string/text in Automation. You need to convert it to a date before formatting it:

{{issue.statuscategorychangedate.toDate.shortDate}}

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Dylan Willis -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

Adding to Trudy's answer...

If you want to preserve the value for later analysis, consider adding a field to capture Age of WIP, as described here: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Automation-discussions/What-is-your-most-useful-automation-Here-is-mine/td-p/1560668#M34

This can be modified to measure just business days if you want.

Kind regards,
Bill