Automations
Automations are the rules that chase things so a person doesn't have to: a ticket goes blocked and someone is told, a critical ticket sits unassigned and someone is told, a sprint end approaches and someone is told. You define the rule once; it fires every time.
Where: Settings › Automations
The page
Rules are grouped by category, each with an active/off toggle and a count of how often it triggered this week. The header keeps score — how many rules are active, how many are off. A rule that never fires is either working as a deterrent or watching for something that can't happen; the trigger counts tell you which.
Building a rule
New Automation walks you through three parts:
1. The trigger — what event starts the rule:
- A new ticket is created, or tickets are added to the active sprint
- A ticket's status changes, or it enters Blocked
- A ticket becomes overdue, or its due date approaches
- A ticket has no activity for X days (stale work)
- A critical ticket has no assignee
- A team member is @mentioned and there's no response after a set time
- A team member has zero activity
- Sprint end approaches, or sprint velocity drops below a threshold
2. The conditions — narrow it down: only certain priorities (Critical or Major), only the active sprint, only after a duration (no activity for…, trigger after…), or below a threshold. Some triggers need no extra configuration at all.
3. The action — who gets told: the assignee, all assignees, the manager, or the project owner.
Rules worth having
Three that earn their keep in most teams:
- Blocked → notify the manager. Blocked tickets are the sprint's silent killer; this makes them loud.
- Critical with no assignee → notify the project owner. A critical ticket nobody owns is a contradiction.
- No activity for 5 days → notify the assignee. Politely returns wandering tickets to memory.
Rules and things to watch
- Notification fatigue is real. Every rule that fires teaches people to read it or to ignore it. Few rules, tuned thresholds, and a willingness to switch off a noisy one beat a wall of alerts nobody sees.
- Automations chase; they don't fix. A rule surfaces the stale ticket — a human still has to decide about it.