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Substitution Variables

Substitution Variables

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May 22, 2025

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Description

Substitution variables are a powerful capability for some clients like Jira to customize the creation or updating of issues using values from issues or other Jira information. Variables provide text string representations of fields useful for inclusion in other fields - see Substitution Variables for Jira for more information. For other clients, there are more limited capabilities that follow the same general technique. 

The syntax for referencing substitution variables is: %<variable name>%.

Example: %now%

 

Substitution variables and variable replacements

Variable Replacements are different than substitution variables. Don't confuse them or their uniquely different syntax.

Variables

Variable

Description

Notes

now

Current date/time in the default date/time format or a specific format.

For clients that access a server and the server provides time information, it is the server's time and is only calculated once on first access to the server.  Otherwise it is the clients time. 

All clients

base_url

Base URL

Blank if the client does not access a server

user_id

Current user's id

Blank if the client does not define a user for server access

function_<function name>(<parameters>)

  • list(number, number)

  • compare(number, number)

  • compare(text, text)

  • lowercase(text)

  • uppercase(text)

Functions that derive useful text values that can be used as substitution variables. 

Examples

Function

Result

Description

%function_list(0,9)%

0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9

Produce a comma separated range of numbers.

%function_compare(-5,5)%

-1

Compare 2 numbers or strings to product -1, 0 or 1 for less than, equal, or greater than.

%function_compare(5,5)%

0


%function_compare(5,0)%

1


%function_compare(, )%

0


%function_compare(%function_lowercase(Xyz)%, xyz)%

0

Compare text for natural order less than, equal, or greater than.

%function_lowercase(Xyz)%

xyz

Lowercase text

%function_uppercase(Xyz)%

XYZ

Uppercase text

  • list since 9.7

  • compare since 9.7

  • lowercase since 9.7

  • uppercase since 9.7

 

Configured date format

For date substitution variables, the format of the replacement variable can be specified if the default format is not desirable. The format is specified by a Simple Date Format string enclosed in parenthesis following the substitution variable name. For example: %now(yyyy-MM-dd)% will result in replacement like 2019-11-08.

Client Specific Extensions