Rules with this trigger can only be invoked manually. The simple use case that it addresses is when we want to generate release notes on an ad-hoc basis.

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Steps to trigger rule manually

When the trigger is set to Manual, you can trigger/execute it using button available on the rules listing page or rule’s detail page. Refer to the below screenshot.

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Clicking on opens the pop-up that expects input/s from the end user. Once the input/s is/are provided & user clicks on Ok all the actions within the manual rule will be executed. This is what the input selector pop-up looks like. If no inputs are needed, a message to that effect will be displayed in the pop-up.

This trigger is used to automate your release notes & reports when a new version is created in Jira. To make this possible, your template should have variables like [versionId] and/or [versionName]. As soon as a new version is created in the given Jira project, rules that have this trigger will get executed, and based on the actions in the rule, the relevant template will be executed to fetch the content from Jira.

You can also user the regular expression for conditional rule execution. The rule will be executed only for those versions whose name matches the regular expression filter, others will be skipped. If unchecked, rule will be executed for all versions that are created in Jira.

What type of regular expressions are allowed - Free Online Java Regular Expression Tester - FreeFormatter.com

Version id/name is the input parameter for this trigger. But this parameter is passed from the Jira version release action to the ARNR rule. Thus as soon as a version is released in Jira, rules that have this trigger will be executed. 

You can also user the regular expression for conditional rule execution. The rule will be executed only for those versions whose name matches the regular expression filter, others will be skipped. If unchecked, rule will be executed for all versions that are created in Jira.

What type of regular expressions are allowed - Free Online Java Regular Expression Tester - FreeFormatter.com

If certain rules are needed to be executed before the planned release date on a recurring frequency, schedule them using this trigger. For a scheduled trigger, the system expects the number of days parameter from you. The idea is to send pre-release emails e.g. send pre-release notes 4 days before the planned release date or 10 days before the release date etc. The planned release date is picked up from Versions defined in your Jira project.

Additionally, you can also configure the timezone & time on which this trigger should run on the given day.

You can also user the regular expression for conditional rule execution. The rule will be executed only for those versions whose name matches the regular expression filter, others will be skipped. If unchecked, rule will be executed for all versions that are created in Jira.

What type of regular expressions are allowed - Free Online Java Regular Expression Tester - FreeFormatter.com

It is possible to execute rules at regular intervals with the help of this trigger. Simply provide a cron expression & timezone as input. Do keep in mind that no version is passed to the actions within this rule when the rule is executed. Thus, for such a rule - ideally, all of the actions should have templates where version input variable/s (i.e. versionId, versionName, versionDesc, etc) are not used at all.

You can use this helper tool to customize the cron expression to meet your needs