How to create a Jira issue on the 2nd Tuesday (or any Nth weekday)

UPDATED 2026 · 5 MIN READ

Some of the most dependable recurring work isn't tied to a date — it's tied to a weekday of the month. The board pack due the 2nd Tuesday. The retro on the last Friday. The planning session on the 1st Monday. Here are the three ways to schedule it in Jira Cloud, honestly compared.

Native "Set to recur" can't

Jira's built-in Set to recur offers exactly four intervals — daily, weekly, every weekday, every 2 weeks. There's no monthly option at all, so "the 2nd Tuesday of the month" isn't expressible. Native is out.

Jira automation can — here's the cron

Automation's scheduled trigger handles it. On the trigger's Advanced tab you can use a cron expression, and Jira supports Quartz-style "Nth weekday" notation with the # character:

So if you're comfortable in cron, automation is a legitimate answer. The catch isn't capability — it's what comes attached to it.

What the automation route costs

• Automation execution quota. Every scheduled rule counts against your plan's automation execution limit. A fleet of recurring rules competes with the automation you'd rather spend on real workflow.
• Cron literacy. Someone has to write and maintain 0 0 9 ? * TUE#2 — and six months later, that expression tells nobody on the team what it's for.
• Per-rule sprawl. Each recurring task is its own rule, scattered across the automation list, with no single view of "what recurring work do we even have?"

The two-click way

Recurring Issues for Jira makes the Nth weekday a dropdown instead of a cron string — and runs on its own Forge scheduled trigger, so it never touches your automation quota:

1. Open the Recurring Issues page from your Jira apps menu and click New schedule.
2. Pick the project, issue type, and a template (add a subtask checklist if you need one).
3. Set the recurrence to Monthly on the Nth weekday and choose the ordinal and day — 2nd · Tuesday, last · Friday, 1st · Monday.
4. Save. The app checks each day and creates the issue only when it's actually due.

Nth-weekday schedules teams set up most

• 2nd Tuesday — board pack prep, monthly business review.
• Last Friday — sprint retro, monthly reporting.
• 1st Monday — planning, monthly kickoff.
• 3rd Wednesday — change-advisory board, release window.

Which should you use?

One or two of these and you're comfortable in cron? Automation is a perfectly good answer — use it. Want them cron-free and off your automation quota, managed in one place — or you're standing up a dozen recurring schedules? That's exactly the gap Recurring Issues fills.

Add Recurring Issues to Jira — free for up to 10 users

Next: recurring issues on the last business day of the month → · Back to the full guide