Summary

When trying to adjust the 'Priority' from an issue through an Automation for Jira rule, you may encounter the following result on the Audit logs:

Using the base level logging of Jira, nothing will be shown on the atlassian-jira.log.

Cause

This problem occurs due to a NullPointerException, when updating the issue 'Priority' through a REST request (also how A4J applies its changes) if the current Priority value is 'null'.
This is caused by the known Jira bug JRASERVER-42570 - Getting issue details... STATUS .

As documented in the bug, it can be reproduced by having the 'Priority' field hidden on the Field configuration for that specific project, which causes the value for newly created issues to be set as 'null' on the database.

Diagnosis

You can confirm that this is indeed the case for your instance by either:

• Increasing the logging sensitivity to INFO for the 'com.codebarrel' class, and reproducing the problem.

• Or by directly checking the 'priority' column for the affected issue on the 'jiraissue' table.
  You may utilize the following query to look for the specific issue on the database (the query was created and tested using Postgres):

  SELECT CONCAT(project.pkey,'-',jiraissue.issuenum) as IssueKey, priority
  FROM jiraissue
  JOIN project ON jiraissue.project = project.id
  WHERE CONCAT(project.pkey,'-',jiraissue.issuenum) LIKE '<Issue_Key>';

Solution

Ensure that the Jira issue 'priority' is not set with a 'null' value on the database.

For the already existing issues:

1. Use a JQL query to find issues that have a priority = null
2. Bulk edit those issues and set a Priority level
3. Test your automation.

Preventing future occurrences:

1. Go to gear Jira administration (gear icon) > Issues > Field configurations.
2. Locate the Field Configuration for the affected project.
3. Click on the Configure link for the appropriate Field Configuration.
4. Make the 'Priority' field visible by Clicking on Show.
5. Test your automation.