Basic Terms and Principles

Automation is the mechanism that allows users to build "dynamic" structures. Such structures show Jira issues arranged into hierarchies, based on the relations between issues, such as Issue Links, Epic Links, Sub-Task, grouping by Jira fields, etc. The hierarchies are automatically updated when the underlying Jira data changes, so they always provide real-time data representation. It is also possible to change the underlying data and relationships by adjusting the structure hierarchy.

Automated structures are built using generators - rules for how the structures are created and organized. Different types of rules produce different results. They allow you to:

• Insert - add issues into the structure. Insert generators are usually used to pull in an initial set of issues, from which the rest of the structure is built.
• Filter - hide some issues from the structure or from certain levels in a structure.
• Sort - sort issues by some field on all levels or on a particular level.
• Group - organize issues into groups based on the values of some field.
• Extend - add additional issues to a structure based on links to the issues already in the structure.

By combining different generators together, you can build custom structures for any business purpose. For some useful examples, see Common Approaches to Building Structures.

Generator Scope

Generators can be added under any "static" part of the structure. There are several common options here:

1. You can add them directly under the root item (contains the structure name, which becomes visible once you switch to Automation editing mode). In this case, their scope will be the entire structure. This is the best option if the entire structure is based on the same set of generators.
2. You can start by adding some folders or issues into your structure manually (dragging in existing ones or creating new ones). Then you can add generators under these folders or issues - in this case the generators will only affect the part of the structure built under each particular folder or issue. This is useful if you want to combine several sets of issues in one structure, but you want to organize them differently. For example, this allows you to include data from several teams, even if they organize their issues differently. In this case, you can visualize the work of each team under a different folder and then see the progress, totals or formula results for the entire hierarchy across all teams.

Order of Execution

The generators added under the same parent are always executed in the following order, regardless of the order in which you add or arrange them:

1. Insert generators
2. Extend generators
3. Filter generators
4. Group generators
5. Sort generators

If there are multiple generators of the same type, they are run in the order they are listed, from top to bottom.

• This does not affect the results of Insert, Extend or Filter generators.
• This does affect the results of Group and Sort generators. With multiple Group generators, items will be grouped first by the top-most Group generator, then by the second highest, etc. The same is true with Sort - the order of the Sort generators defines which field the structure is sorted by first, second, and so on.

To change the order generators of the same-type are run, simply move them up or down in the structure.

Decision Panel

Whenever you perform an action in Structure that is either not supported by the configured generators or requires your attention, you will see a decision panel at the bottom of the screen with a description of the problem and suggested actions. There are several common situations you may see when working with Automation:

• Cannot move a non-issue here. Such messages are shown if you try to add a new generator or move an existing generator under an issue that was added by another generator. Generators can only be added under static content. You can click Acknowledge to undo the move or creation, or drag it under the correct parent (a static issue or folder or the root).
• What would you like to do? You will see such messages if you are moving an issue under a parent which falls under the scope of several generators and it's not clear which of them should be used. For example, if you move an issue under a new parent that is in the scope of a Linked Issues Extender and a Stories Under Epics Extender - You will need to decide whether you want to change the issue link or the epic link. To minimize such requests, make sure you set the level setting for different generators when it makes sense, so that different generators work on different levels.
• You may see other decision panels when you try to make a change to the structure which has no corresponding generator or is not allowed by Jira. For example, trying to reorder issues when there is no sorter, trying to put an epic under another epic when it's in the scope of a Stories Under Epics Extender (since epics cannot have epic links), etc.

Manual Adjustments

For situations when you do want to adjust your structure in a way that is no supported by the generators (override the generator rules), you can enable manual adjustments.