In this post, we examine ten of the most impactful automation use cases—derived from best practices in Project Management—that your team can adapt in Redmine using our new plugin. Each automation details its business value, implementation specifics, and the Redmine triggers, conditions, and actions it utilizes.
1. Smart Auto Assign
• Business Value:
Increases accountability and accelerates task progress by ensuring every new issue has an immediate, responsible owner—reducing the risk of overlooked tasks and improving response time.
• Trigger:
Issue is created.
• Conditions:
o Assignee field is empty.
o Optionally: Issue matches certain tracker, project, or custom field criteria.
• Actions:
o Assign issue to reporter, default user, or calculated user based on group membership, workload, or round-robin.
2. Auto Create Sub Tasks
• Business Value:
Drives standardization and completeness by guaranteeing that all major work items are decomposed into a predictable set of actionable subtasks, improving planning quality and traceability.
• Trigger:
Issue is created.
• Conditions:
o Issue tracker is of a specified type (e.g., “Feature” or “Epic”).
o Optionally: In specific projects or with defined attributes.
• Actions:
o Create multiple child issues (subtasks) with preconfigured subject, tracker, and description fields under the parent issue.
3. Sync Parent and Child Tasks
• Business Value:
Maintains alignment between high-level objectives and granular execution. Reduces manual synchronization and ensures accurate project reporting, particularly on completion and bottlenecks.
• Trigger:
Subtask (child issue) status is updated.
• Conditions:
o All child issues under the same parent have reached a defined status (e.g., “QA”).
o Optionally: Only for certain trackers or statuses.
• Actions:
o Update the parent issue’s status to match (or move to a next stage), e.g., set parent to “QA” when all children are “QA”.
4. Clone Issues (Cross Project)
• Business Value:
Enhances reusability of work, accelerates cross-team collaboration, and supports repeatable workflows by making it trivial to replicate issues across projects or templates.
• Trigger:
Issue status changes to a specified value (e.g., “Ready for QA”).
• Conditions:
o Issue belongs to a specified tracker or project.
o Optionally: Additional field/value checks.
• Actions:
o Clone issue to a different project, copying all relevant fields, attachments, custom fields, and optionally, add watchers.
5. Auto Delete Files from Old Tasks
• Business Value:
Removing attachments from old tasks helps keep the system clean and save the disk space.
• Trigger:
Scheduled (every month).
• Conditions:
o Task closed more then a year ago.
o Optionally: Issue belongs to certain tracker or status.
• Actions:
o Delete attachments.
6. Change Due Date on Transition
• Business Value:
Promotes timely delivery and enforces team discipline by adjusting deadlines in response to actual progress, reflecting real project dynamics and priorities.
• Trigger:
Issue status transitions to “In Progress.”
• Conditions:
o Status changes from specific previous statuses (e.g., not “Closed”).
o Optionally: Only for certain trackers.
• Actions:
o Set or update the “Due date” field to today plus a configured number of days (offset).
7. Remind Assignees of Stalled Issues
• Business Value:
Minimizes project stagnation and SLA violations by actively prompting users to update or progress work that is at risk of being forgotten or deprioritized.
• Trigger:
Scheduled job (e.g., runs daily).
• Conditions:
o Issue is in a defined status (e.g., “In Progress”).
o No update activity for more than X days.
• Actions:
o Send email reminder to the current Assignee, with issue link and custom message.
8. Send Near Due Reminders
• Business Value:
Reduces the risk of missed deadlines by giving stakeholders advanced warning, enabling proactive adjustments and resource allocation.
• Trigger:
Scheduled job (e.g., runs daily).
• Conditions:
o Issue due date is within Y days from today.
o Issue is not closed or resolved.
• Actions:
o Send reminder notifications to the Assignee, project manager, or custom group.
9. Auto Add Watcher on Bug Creation
• Business Value:
Increases team awareness and responsiveness by automatically involving relevant personnel in new bug reports, accelerating triage and resolution times.
• Trigger:
Issue is created.
• Conditions:
o Issue tracker is “Bug.”
o Optionally: Severity or project matches criteria.
• Actions:
o Add specified user(s) or group(s) to the Watchers list for the issue.
10. Set Start Date on Transition to “In Progress”
• Business Value:
Provides accurate metrics on task commencement for reporting, forecasting, and process improvement, without relying on manual entry.
• Trigger:
Issue status changes to “In Progress.”
• Conditions:
o Status actually transitions (not simply edited).
o Optionally: Field “Start date” is empty.
• Actions:
o Set the “Start date” field to the current date.
Summary:
Adopting these automations with the Redmine+ Automation plugin enables teams to enforce best practices, minimize manual work, improve data quality, and drive better project outcomes. Each example is fully adaptable to your workflow through configurable triggers, conditions, and actions—no scripting required.
