Workflow Automation

SIL and JavaScript: An Introduction

Workflows within Jira Cloud operate in the same asynchronous manner as other Jira integrations. While Jira and Power Scripts function as distinct entities, this asynchronicity presents a challenge. While it was somewhat manageable for workflow actions, it proved infeasible for conditions and validators. In these cases, you need to determine the viability of a transition before it's executed.

To address this challenge, Atlassian introduced the capability for external actions to be triggered asynchronously within the workflow. This ensures that any failures in such actions do not disrupt the transition process. Jira gains the freedom to silently retry action execution as needed, especially when a action fails to respond within a specified time or returns an error.

Additionally, Atlassian mandated coding conditions and validators in JavaScript, ensuring they can be safely executed on the Jira host. To mitigate potential performance concerns, the scope of conditions and validators was intentionally restricted.

To summarize:

Configuring Conditions, Validators and Post Functions

After you install Power Scripts™ for Jira, go to the Administration > Workflows page and create a workflow, associated with a project.

Open

You cannot modify the workflow while it's active, therefore you have to create a draft workflow. Select your workflow and press on the edit menu:

Open

.
The result should look like one of the images below.

Text View

1. The Diagram and Text buttons can be used to switch the view mode of the workflow.

2. Click the transition name to edit the transition.

Diagram View

1. The Diagram and Text buttons can be used to switch the view mode of the workflow.

2. In Diagram mode you must first click a transition line to see the transitions options.

3. Once a transition is selected you can click the Conditions, Validators and Post Functions link for that transition.
   Clicking a transition will show the transition triggers, conditions, validators, and actions.

An important consequence of the above model is that conditions and validators should not have side-effects. In fact, Jira Expressions are guaranteed not to have side-effects by construction. However, actions are allowed to make any changes to the issues, including advancing the issue in the workflow, and here’s where we shine.

To create conditions, validators and actions, click the corresponding Add <object type> link at the top of the workflow management tab (Add condition / Add validator/ Add action).

Postfunctions

The following image shows the creation of a action.

After you click the Add button, you will be presented with 3 options (see screenshot below):

1. Template - use the script template editor to create a new script

2. New Script - write a new script on the fly

3. Existing Script - use a script that has already been written and exists in the SIL Manager

For the purposes of this example, choose Existing Script and click Next.

Now, click the edit icon (pencil) next to the script input to select the script you wish to use for the action.

Click next to apply the selected script as a action.

Return to the transition screen, you will see that your newly added action is reflected in the view:

Updating the action

Note that to change the action you need to go through the above wizard, and this includes execution options. However, if you change the code of the action directly in the SIL Manager, the changes are immediate, the SIL Engine determines that the action has been changed and picks the changes, re-parses it and executes the new code.

Execution of Actions (Actions)

In case you defined multiple postfunctions for the same action, note that the order of execution is heavily dependent on the moment of Jira triggering them and it cannot be guaranteed. Unlike the server/DC product, you should always favor one single postfunction per transition action.

Actions always run in the same engine thread that receives the HTTP request. This ensures the best performance for a variety of use cases. However, if runtime exceeds 5 seconds, use schedule functions to run the code that is taking longer or declare the action as asynchronous. This frees the thread to handle another request.

If the action takes too long, note that it will be retried by Jira. So even if your action is happily running with no errors, you may encounter the same trigger because Jira does not yet received a response from the first run. For long running actions always use the asynchronous execution, or schedule the execution at a later time using one of the scheduler functions.

Conditions and Validators

Conditions and validators may be configured starting in the same point as for actions. They serve different purposes, but the language they are expressed in is the Jira Expressions language. Power Scripts allows you to either configure a pre-defined condition or validator (i.e. built by us) or define your own. For the purpose of this document, we will show how to define your own so you can achieve the flexibility you need in your workflows.

Let’s open again the transition view, but this time we will select the “Conditions“ tab.

Let’s add a condition. Press on the “Add condition“ button so we can open up the next configuration screen, where you will select “Power Scripts Condition“:

The next screen will look familiar to you:

We will choose to write our own condition. Because we want to allow the transition to happen only if there are at least 2 comments, enter the following Jira Expression in the code box:

like this:

Press “Next“ then the “Add“ button belonging to Jira:

If everything went according to the plan, you will be returned to the transition view screen:

Let’s add a validator, too. Choose the Validators tab and then press on the “Add validator“ button:

From the list of validators, choose Power Scripts validators. We will also write code for this one too, it’s the most flexible option

Press on the “Add” button and choose “Write your own“ . We’re going to fully customize this, right? so we will add this code, requiring to have at least one attachment.

Enter a message for the validator. It will be shown in the UI when the expression on the right will return false.

Once again, press on the “Add“ button for Jira to fully configure the validator:

It will return you to the transition view, where we will have 1 condition and one validator.

We are now ready to publish the workflow. After you published it, we are ready to test it. Choose an issue with at least two comments, otherwise you will not see the transition you configured (because it will be hidden by the condition that’s unfulfilled), and try to transition it. If you do not have any attachment, you will receive the error message from the validator:

However, if you attach something, the transition will succeed:

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