Automation rules automatically execute tasks based on predefined conditions and triggers, improving efficiency, reducing errors, enhancing collaboration, and supporting agile development.
Why use automation rules?
When you use project collaboration for daily tasks, you might encounter the following issues:
The code for a requirement has been released, but its status is still "Pending."
A task has a default owner, but you have to manually assign it each time.
Work items are approaching their due date, but you miss delivery deadlines because you do not receive reminders.
These problems increase manual maintenance costs and reduce delivery efficiency.
To address these issues, Alibaba Cloud DevOps project collaboration provides an automation rule engine. It uses a trigger-condition-action model to achieve automatic status transition, automatic requirement assignment, and automatic reminders. Let the automation engine handle tedious and repetitive tasks. With these rules, you can automatically execute specific tasks in your project management process, reducing manual operations and increasing efficiency. An automation rule typically consists of a trigger event (such as a work item creation or status change) and an execution action (such as assigning an owner or updating a status).
Use cases
By creating automation rules, you can enable automatic status transition, automatic requirement assignment, automatic reminders, and platform integration in your daily collaboration.
Automatic status transition
When a requirement is linked to development work, its status transition is often triggered by real-world actions. Previously, you had to manually change the status on the platform after completing a task. This increased manual effort, reduced collaboration efficiency, and led to non-standard workflows. Setting up automatic status transitions with the automation engine effectively solves this problem.
Automatic requirement assignment
In mature projects, a specific owner is often responsible for a particular area of work. Previously, you had to ask around to find the correct owner when creating a new requirement, which was inconvenient and increased communication overhead. Assigning work incorrectly could cause delivery delays or even lead to missed requirements. Automatic requirement assignment solves this problem.
Automatic attribute change
In some scenarios, other actions can trigger a change in a work item's field value. Previously, users had to maintain these attribute values manually, which increased maintenance costs and could lead to untimely or inaccurate updates. Automatic attribute change can solve this problem.
Automatic reminder
Project managers want to remind work item owners to take action before the deadline. Sending these reminders manually is costly and often not timely enough. Creating a custom automatic reminder rule effectively solves this problem.
How to use it
The automation rule engine consists of three parts: a trigger event, an execution condition, and an execution action. To help you get started quickly, Alibaba Cloud DevOps provides ready-to-use templates.
To create a rule, simply modify the fields in a template.
When a rule is triggered, the Rule Execution History is displayed on the corresponding work item.
Click the entry to open the Rule Execution Details page and view more information.
The Automation Settings page aggregates all rule execution records for the project, where you can view the creation history, change history, and execution log for the rules.
Failed rule executions are marked with a special icon. Click the entry to view the failure details.
To use the same set of rules across multiple projects, add them to a project template. New projects created from this template automatically inherit these rules.