User Problem

Currently, automation actions are designed to automatically retry if they aren't completed within 30 seconds. This behavior can cause issues with transition actions.

For example, if a transition action takes longer than 30 seconds to complete, the automation may incorrectly retry the action. This can lead to failures, as the transition might eventually complete within the system, rendering the retry invalid.

Example scenario

• An automation initiates a transition from "Resolved" to "Closed."
• The transition process takes longer than 30 seconds.
• The automation attempts to retry the transition due to the timeout.
• Meanwhile, the original transition successfully completes.
• The retry attempt fails because transitioning from "Resolved" to "Resolved" is invalid.
• The automation logs the error from the failed retry attempt.

Suggested Solutions

Option 1: Set Clear Expectations for Downstream Dependencies

If Automation requires responses to be completed in under 30s, and will give up otherwise, then need to make that expectation clear, and fail that component e.g. with something like:

Failed to execute action within 30 seconds. Giving up now.

Option 2: Implement Smarter Timeout Handling

Some API calls, like issue transitions, are not idempotent. i.e. if you call transition to
the same status twice, then it will fail the 2nd time.

If the automation times out on these actions, it should first verify the current state of the issue before attempting a retry. This can prevent unnecessary and potentially problematic retries.

Current Workarounds

Currently, there are no available workarounds.