Documentation · Jira Cloud app

Routine – Recurring Tasks for Jira

Routine creates Jira issues on a schedule: daily, on weekdays, weekly, monthly or yearly, at the local time you choose. This page explains every setting. For anything it does not answer, write to hello@layerwiselabs.com.

Getting started

Install Routine from the Atlassian Marketplace. A Jira administrator does this once for the whole site.
Open a project and choose Routine – Recurring tasks in the project’s navigation.
Click New recurring task, enter a summary and an issue type, pick a schedule, check the preview of the next five issues and click Save.

New issues appear within five minutes of the scheduled time. To get one right away without changing the schedule, use Create now.

Schedules

Daily, or every few days with an interval.
Every weekday, Monday to Friday.
Weekly on the days you tick, for example every 2 weeks on Monday and Thursday.
Monthly on a day of the month or on the last day. In shorter months, days 29 to 31 fall on the last day of the month, so “day 31” never skips a month.
Yearly on a day and month.

Each recurring task has its own time and time zone. Daylight-saving changes keep the time on the clock: 9:00 stays 9:00 all year. On the night clocks spring forward, a time that does not exist moves forward by the gap; on the night they fall back, a repeated time is used once, the first time. The list shows the next issue in the task’s time zone and, where it differs, in yours.

An optional start date lets a series begin later, and an optional end date stops it. Before you save, Next five issues shows exactly when the next issues will be created.

What each issue contains

Summary and description, with placeholders that are replaced by the date of each issue: {date}, {year}, {month} and {week}. Example: “Weekly report – week {week}”.
Assignee and labels. Without an assignee, Jira’s default for the project applies.
Due after (days): the due date is the creation date plus this many days.
Priority and components, offered when the project’s create screen has these fields.
Sub-tasks: one per line, created under each new issue in this order. Placeholders work here too.
Template issue: each new issue copies the fields of an existing issue, including custom fields. Its dates are not copied; if the create screen requires a date, it gets the date of the occurrence. Fields set on the recurring task take precedence, and changes to the template apply to the next issues.
Add each new issue to the active sprint, for projects with a Scrum board. Without an active sprint the issue is still created, with a note under Last run.
Skip an issue while the previous scheduled one is still open, so unfinished work does not pile up. An extra issue from Create now does not count.

Issues are created by the app. The person who created the recurring task is the reporter where the create screen allows it.

Working with recurring tasks

The list shows each task’s schedule, next issue, last run and an Active switch to pause and resume it.
Edit recalculates the next issue. Duplicate copies a task as a starting point for a similar one.
History shows the last 20 runs: created, skipped or failed, with the reason.
Open issues lists every issue of the task that is not done yet. Select some and close them in one step through the workflow’s Done transition, or open the list in Jira’s issue search.
The Calendar tab shows created issues and upcoming ones month by month.
Delete stops a task. Issues it created stay in Jira.

A project can hold up to 200 recurring tasks.

When Jira reports a problem

If Jira refuses an issue, for example because a required field is missing on the create screen, the reason appears under Last run and the schedule moves on to the next date. Fix the task or the screen, and the next issue is created normally.
If Jira is briefly unreachable, the task shows Waiting and the issue is tried again on the next run. Each issue carries a marker, so an issue Jira saved during the hiccup is found and not created twice.
After a longer outage, each task creates one catch-up issue for the latest missed date and then continues on schedule.
If sub-tasks or the sprint could not be added, the issue still counts as created, with a warning under Last run.

Permissions

Everyone with access to the project sees its recurring tasks. Creating, editing, pausing, deleting and closing issues need the Create issues permission in the project; without it the page is read-only. Closing runs as you, so Jira’s own workflow permissions apply.

Jira administrators find an overview of every recurring task on the site under Jira settings → Apps → Routine – Recurring tasks, with each task’s state and a note when tasks failed on their last run.

Licensing

Routine is a paid app, billed through Atlassian. Sites with up to 10 users use it for free; above that, pricing per user is shown on the Atlassian Marketplace. Without an active license your recurring tasks are kept, but no issues are created and tasks can only be paused or deleted. Once the license is active again, each task that missed dates creates one catch-up issue for the latest of them.

Data and privacy

Routine runs entirely on Atlassian Forge. Recurring tasks and their history are stored in Forge storage of your own site; there are no external servers, no data leaves your site and there is no tracking. The only personal data stored are two Atlassian account IDs per task, the creator and the assignee. Accounts that Atlassian reports as closed are removed every week. Details are in the privacy policy.

Languages

Routine follows your Jira language: English or German.

Support

Write to hello@layerwiselabs.com. You get an answer within two business days (Monday to Friday, 9:00–17:00, Europe/Belgrade). Feature requests are welcome.