Criteria for prioritizing rules in case of conflict
In some situations, Out of Office Assistant must choose which rule applies to an issue. This happens when three conditions are met:
More than one rule is active at the same time for the same user
The scopes of the active rules overlap, i.e., both can apply to some issues
An issue within that overlap is assigned to the user, potentially triggering the logic of both rules.
For example: if two rules are active today and the first applies to all projects, while the second applies only to one project called “Secret Project”. In this case, the app must decide what to do when any issue in “Top Secret” is assigned to the user, since that issue is also part of the scope “all projects”.
Here are our current criteria for prioritizing rules:
Same dates, different scopes
If the start and end dates are identical, the rules will be applied in the following order:
First, JQL-based rules
Then, rules for a single project
Last, All Project rules
This means that rules with a more granular scope can be seen as coexisting with generic, all projects rules and defining “exceptions” to them.
In the example above, any issue belonging to “Top Secret” will trigger the single project rule and that rule only – excluding the all projects rule.
However, if an issue in any other project is assigned to the current user, the All projects rule would be triggered.
Different dates
If the rules don’t have a different scope, they will be applied in the following order:
If start dates are different, older rules will come first
If start dates are identical, rules ending sooner will come first
Different sources
In addition to manual rules, Out of Office Assistant allows to create rules from different sources such as Outlook, Tempo, or Slack. Since these platforms can coexist, we give users the power to decide which of them should prevail in case of conflict.
Keep reading: Adjusting source priorities