Automatically reassign issues of agents who are on vacation

Summary

At this time, there is no direct way to reassign the issues when an agent is on vacation.

Solution

The workaround needs an entity that represents currently working agents. Choose one:

• A group (the article's example uses a group called Working Agents).

• A project role or a maintained list.

Mark each agent's leave using a date custom field (for example, Leave start). To achieve this, we need three automation rules, then add/remove agents from the working set based on those dates, and reassign accordingly.

1. Rule to remove the agent from the group Working Agents when the leave starts

2. Rule to automatically reassign all the issues owned by agents who are not part of the group Working Agents

3. Rule to add the agent back to the group Working Agents when the leave ends

Rule to remove the agent from the group Working Agents when the leave starts

1. Add a scheduled trigger to run every day before the working hours start

2. Add a lookup action to find issues where the leave of an agent starts the same day

   project = "<PKEY>" AND "Leave start" = now() and resolution = "Unresolved" and assignee is not EMPTY

   ⚠️ The lookupIssue action is limited to 100 issues, if the JQL returns more than 100 issues here then lookupIssue will only refer to the first 100 issues.

3. Add an advanced branch with the smart value below. Distinct function returns all items in a given list, without duplicate items.

   {{lookupIssues.assignee.distinct}}
   

4. Within the Advanced branch that will run for a distinct list of assignees, add a send web request action to remove the user from the group Working Agents

   Web request URL: https://<YourSite>.atlassian.net/rest/api/3/group/user?groupId=<GroupID>&accountId={{distinctAssignee}}

   HTTP method: DELETE

   Headers

   Authorization: Basic "email:API Token"

   

Rule to automatically reassign all the issues owned by agents who are not part of the group Working Agents

1. Add a scheduled trigger to run every day when the working hours start to find issues with agents who are not part of the group Working Agents

   1. Enable the option Run a JQL search and execute actions for each issue in the query and add the following JQL:

      assignee not in (membersOf("Working Agents")) and assignee is not empty and project = <PKEY>

   2. Disable the option Only include issues that have changed since the last time this rule executed

      

2. Add Assign issue action to Assign these issues to users from the group Working Agents using one of the available methods:

   

3. Add an Edit issue action to clear the Leave start field since the issues are now reassigned

   

Rule to add the agent back to the group Working Agents when the leave ends

To add the agent back to the group Working Agents, you can keep a test ticket that can be used by agents to trigger an automation rule that adds them back to the group.

1. Add the trigger Manual Trigger

2. Add a send web request action to add the user from the group Working Agents

   Web request URL: https://<YourSite>.atlassian.net/rest/api/3/group/user?groupId=<GroupId>

   HTTP method: POST

   Headers:

   Authorization: Basic "email:API Token"

   Accept: application/json

   Content-Type: application/json

   Web request body: Custom data

   Custom data:

   {   "accountId": "{{initiator.accountId}}" }
   

3. Once the agent is back, they can use the test ticket to mark themselves as back by triggering the rule from the Actions button:

   

Related articles

• Jira automation actions

• Jira smart values — users

Contact Atlassian support if you have any questions.