Automation For Jira - How to concatenate comments from an original issue into one comment and copy it into the cloned issue

Summary

When cloning issues, you might want to copy over all the comments from the original issue into the cloned issues. As explained in the KB article How to copy comments from the original issue to the cloned issue, it is possible to achieve this goal by configuring a rule with Automation For Jira.

However, this solution only works for Jira Cloud, since it requires the Advance Branching functionality which is only available on Cloud, but not on Server/Data Center as per the Feature Request https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JIRAAUTOSERVER-749.

While it is not possible to copy each comment 1 by 1 from the original issue to the clone issue, it is at least possible to concatenate all the comments from the original issue into 1 single comment, and add this comment to the cloned issue. While it is not an ideal solution, it allows to see all the comments from the original issue in the cloned issue.

The purpose of this KB article is to describe how to configure this automation rule.

Solution

For this solution, we will assume that you are trying to configure a rule that will clone an issue when it is transitioned to the "Done" status, and that will concatenate all its comments into the new issue.

Rule configuration

The rule will need to be configured as follows:

• Add the Issue Transitioned trigger with the following settings

  • From status: Leave blank

  • To status: "Done" (to be replaced with the status of your choice)

• Add the action Clone Issue

• Add the following Branch rule

  • Type of related issues: Most recently created issue

• Inside the Branch Rule, add the following comments:

  • Add the action Link issues, with the following settings

    • This issue: clones

    • Issue: Trigger issue

  • Add the Advanced compare condition, with the following settings:

    • First value:

      1 {{triggerIssue.comments}}

    • Condition: "Does not equal"

    • Second value: Leave this field empty

    • Add the action Add comment to issue, with the following settings:

      • Comment: copy the full expression below:

        1 2 3 4 {{#triggerIssue.comments}} Comment made by: {{author.displayName}} on {{created}} {{body}} {{/}}

Rule screenshot

Seeing the rule in action

The screenshot below shows what the original issue looks like, along with its comments:

The screenshot below shows what the cloned issue looks like, along with the comment that contents the list of comments from the original issue: