Bulk Assign
An out of office rule looks after the work items that reach you while you are away. The ones already assigned to you stay yours until somebody moves them. Bulk assign hands that backlog over in a single pass, using the coverers and the scope you already set on the rule.
Before you start
The rule needs at least one coverer - bulk assign hands your work items to the people named on it.
The rule's scope decides what you can hand over. A rule limited to two spaces will not offer you work items from anywhere else.
Hand over your open work items
Open Out of Office Assistant from the Apps section of the Jira sidebar, then go to the My Rules tab.
Find the rule for the absence you are preparing for. Its scope is in the Space/JQL column and the people covering for you are in Coverers.
Select Actions in the Actions column at the end of that row and choose Bulk assign.
The Bulk Assign to Coverer dialog lists the open work items currently assigned to you that fall inside the rule's scope, and every one of them starts selected. Clear the checkbox on anything you want to keep.
Choose one of the two options in the dialog. Assign work items to coverers, which is selected for you, hands each work item to a coverer named on the rule, dealing them out in rotation where the rule has several. Add coverers as watcher leaves the assignee as it is and has the coverers follow the work items instead.
Select Assign to Coverer to start the run. The app works through the list and reports progress per work item.
The coverers the work is going to are named above the list, so you can check them before you start.
The Bulk Assign to Coverer dialog, with every work item in scope selected.
Work items the app cannot move are reported as failures at the end of the run. The rest of the selection still goes through.
After the handover
Every work item moved this way is written to the rule's reassignment log, alongside the reassignments the rule made on its own. Open it from the rule's Reassignments column in the rules list, which also reflects what you handed over. The log's Trigger column records what caused each reassignment, and anything that failed is listed on its Failures tab.
Bulk assign runs once, over the work items that match at that moment. It does not repeat: anything assigned to you afterwards is picked up by the rule while it is active. When you get back, take the work items back from the same log.
Related pages
Coverer Setup and Management - choosing the people a bulk assign will hand work to.
The List of Out of Office Rules - what each column and row action on the My Rules tab does.
Reclaiming Reassigned Issues - taking the work items back when you return.