This page describes service limits in place for Automation for JIRA for both cloud and server.  

Why do we need limits?

Automation for JIRA allows users to create powerful automation rules using its simple rule builder.  With scheduled JQL triggers for example it's possible to setup automation rules that execute over many hundred issues every couple of minutes.  These rules can add considerable load to both the JIRA instance as well as our cloud service. As a result JIRA may experience performance issues for all users of JIRA, or automation rules may end up taking a long time to execute in JIRA Cloud for all JIRA instances using Automation for JIRA.

As a result we decided to implement some limits to keep the impact on JIRA's performance minimal, and to ensure the cloud service isn't adversely impacted by a single automation rule.  We chose these limits such that 99.9% of users will never experience them and only apply to truly exceptional cases.  

What are the limits?

We currently have the following limits in place:

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Number of rule executions per hour

(only applies if rate exceeds 2 rule executions per 5 seconds)

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Number of issues edited per hour

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We have removed this limit.  It will no longer apply in server versions released after 3.6.6.

** In server this number is derived from the jira.search.views.default.max configuration property which can be configured and limits the number of issues returned per search globally in JIRA.

How do I ensure I don't breach these limits?

When a rule breaches its limit, the audit log will contain more details:

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Based on the details provided in the audit log you can take several steps to ensure your rules fall below the acceptable limits:

• Reduce the interval at which a scheduled rule executes. For example, only execute a rule every hour instead of every 5 minutes.
• Reduce the number of issues, by restricting your JQL query to only the issues you care about.  E.g. check that the updated time of the issue is within a certain range (like updated > - 1w to include only last week's issues).
• Split your automation rule across several rules if you need more components per rule.
• For large once off operations that need to edit several 1000 issues, use JIRA's bulk change functionality.

How can I increase these limits?

In cloud we will determine on a case by case basis if these limits should be increased.  Please contact support and provide us with more details about your automation rules and use case.

For server we will add an administration UI in future allowing global administrators to set values for some of the above limits.  For now you can change these values via a REST interface:

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