Jira Automation + Copying Fields#
We heavily utilise Jira at my place of work and one of our non IT based departments use it in their business processes. It was chosen to replace a custom developed, unreliable .NET application and apart from minor bending to suit the processes Jira is an excellent replacement. It’s also far more reliable, far easier to keep up-to-date and runs on Linux!
In the latest update I had a chance to really push the new version of the Jira Automation Plugin, which is a free and open source plugin. Written by Atlassian to support their internal processes, It’s a little nugget of awesome that has really extended what we can do without writing bulk custom code.
The team that maintains the Jira Automation plugin implemented a feature request I raised for Copying fields, which they implented and included in their next release. However being a simple field copy, the data needs to be exactly how the destination expects.
Insert the Script Runner plugin. Which offers a massive amount of things you can extend without writing a custom Jira Plugin. Whilst I’ve written one before I’m completely allergic to the concept, as it requires Java ramp up that I’m not really interested in.
When I first used the Script Runner plugin, external scripts were really the only option for doing things. Often when I need to hack something together a post action script is my default go to, but in the case of the combination of the Automation Plugin gave results that didn’t work in practice and required a lot more effort to do the job.
The easiest way to give the Automation plugin data that the destination can accept is to use a transitionary custom field. I was initially using a post action script to populate it, however it populates it after the Trigger that fires the automation and gets blatted in the process. Which is less than ideal.
Setting a field to contain the raw username
// Accessing Customfield data
import com.atlassian.jira.ComponentManager
import com.atlassian.jira.issue.CustomFieldManager
// Updating Custom field data
import com.atlassian.jira.issue.ModifiedValue
import com.atlassian.jira.issue.util.DefaultIssueChangeHolder
import com.atlassian.jira.issue.util.IssueChangeHolder
import com.atlassian.jira.issue.fields.CustomField
// Define Field IDs
def assignee = "customfield_11402"
def assigneeTransition = "customfield_11705"
// Load Custom Fields from Jira
ComponentManager componentManager = ComponentManager.getInstance()
CustomFieldManager customFieldManager = componentManager.getCustomFieldManager()
CustomField assigneeSrc = customFieldManager.getCustomFieldObject(assignee)
CustomField assigneeTransitionCF = customFieldManager.getCustomFieldObject(assigneeTransition)
// Load Values
def assigneeVal = issue.getCustomFieldValue(assigneeSrc).getUsername()
// Write data
IssueChangeHolder changeHolder = new DefaultIssueChangeHolder();
assigneeTransitionCF.updateValue(null, issue, new ModifiedValue(issue.getCustomFieldValue(assigneeTransitionCF), assigneeVal), changeHolder)
Now the Script Runner plugin can produce scripted fields. Which can return information when queried (cached by default, but caching can be disabled). Which is a perfect companion to the Automation Plugin.
Returning a raw username compatible with the Assignee Field
import com.atlassian.jira.ComponentManager
import com.atlassian.jira.issue.CustomFieldManager
import com.atlassian.jira.issue.fields.CustomField
if ( issue.getCustomFieldValue(ComponentManager.getInstance().getCustomFieldManager().getCustomFieldObject("customfield_10400")) == null ) {
return
} else {
// Get username from 'Custom Field 10400'
return issue.getCustomFieldValue(ComponentManager.getInstance().getCustomFieldManager().getCustomFieldObject("customfield_10400")).getUsername()
}
Update 2014-08-08 - It’s probably a good idea to check that 10400 contains a user object before you fill your logs with Null Pointer Exceptions during indexing!
Automatically generate a Date compatible with the Due Date field
import java.sql.Timestamp
import java.util.Date
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat
import java.text.DateFormat
//Returns current date + 4 weeks - formatted '26/Jul/14'
return new SimpleDateFormat("d/MMM/yy").format(new Timestamp(new java.util.Date().getTime()).plus(28))
Though the script runner is based on Groovy, you can import (at least to my limited knowledge) any Java class available within the Jira framework. The Jira Automation + Script Runner plugins complement each other perfectly and really give you a huge amount of flexibility without writing a custom Plugin. As long as the data for the destination is valid the Automation plugin will happily set the field and it’s trivial to provide that data via a Scripted field.
Happy Days!