How can I use automation to create subtasks that link to issues within an Epic the parent is in?

[Rob Horan]

I have an ambitious idea.  I want to use Issue Templates for Jira to create an Epic with tasks and some subtasks.  There will be links pre-defined so that I can have a basic structure in place. 

Now, what I want to do is create sub-tasks at key points.  This is probably simple enough.  However:

• I want some of those sub-tasks to link to other issues, not their parent, that exist within the structure.
• I want to automatically create a sub-task under issue A when something in issue B happens.

Are either of these things possible?  What can I use as identification criteria?

I plan to use the built in automation for Jira in Atlassian Cloud but am open to other ideas as well... except for maybe ScriptRunner due to cost and the required coding knowledge.

[wwalser]

> Are either of these things possible?  What can I use as identification criteria?

Probably. There isn't enough information in your original question to know the answer to a certainty and I think the best way to find out is to start building.

> Now, what I want to do is create sub-tasks at key points.  This is probably simple enough.  However:

Automation comes with a number of "triggers" these are events in Jira that Automation can listen for to know when to kick off an automation. If these triggers match well with your "key points", that is a good first step.

> I want some of those sub-tasks to link to other issues, not their parent, that exist within the structure.

Automation's "branch" component allows you to traverse related issues for perform actions on them. By related issues, I typically mean parents / children. It sounds like you want to break out of that typical behavior. You can likely use the JQL feature of branching to do this. Again, the way to find out is to start building.

> I want to automatically create a sub-task under issue A when something in issue B happens.

This is a fairly common use-case in Automation.

The only part of this that I'm skeptical of working (without further detail) is the use of Issue Templates for Jira as that pluginly likely hasn't integrated with Jira Automation to provide a way for the two to work together.

[Rob Horan]

Thanks - I appreciate the time you've taken to respond, and the level of detail you provided.

Issue Templates for Jira doesn't need to work with Automation at all.  Once a structure has been created that plugin is done.

Here's the situation.  Assume you have an Epic that, for the sake of argument, represents a deployment. Within that epic are standard issues, some of whom have dependencies on each other.  Within those issues there are individual tasks that will be represented by subtasks.  I want to create those subtasks at key points.  Here's the thing though. Those new subtasks may need to have dependency links to other issues in the Epic structure.  The other thing I may need to do is create a subtask of an issue when a task or a subtask within the epic is transitioned to a certain point.  

Assume the project key is EX.  Assume EX-5 is a feature, with EX-6 being a subtask.   When EX-6 is resolved I want to make a new subtask under EX-4 which links to EX-7

I'll have to look at the branching documentation. Thanks again.

[wwalser]

> Assume the project key is EX.  Assume EX-5 is a feature, with EX-6 being a subtask.   When EX-6 is resolved I want to make a new subtask under EX-4 which links to EX-7

I believe from this example I have a close enough understanding of what you're describing. I don't have a good picture of what logic will be used to traverse across the different issues in the structure.

Here are my questions based on the example you gave. I've laid these out roughly in the way that they would be designed in Jira Automation:

Trigger: When Issue is resolved.

Branch: Lookup associated issue(?) — what is the logic by which we arrive at a lookup of EX-4?

Action: Within that associated issue (EX-4), create a new subtask.

Action: Link newly created issue to(?) — what is the logic by which we know to link to EX-7?

[Josh_Kochelek__Modus_Create]

Both of the things in your idea are definitely achievable. I created a similar solution earlier this year using Issue Templates for Jira and Adaptavist ScriptRunner. With Issue templates, you can generate tasks and sub-tasks within the Epic using post functions.

The linking question is a little complex, as with Issue Templates, you can link issues that are being generated simultaneously within the template. However, if you are trying to link the sub-task being generated to a pre-existing issue, that is not possible within that plug-in (for now).

However, you could potentially create that linkage with Automation for Jira, and just have an automation rule setup to run and test logic whenever a issue is created to generate links.

I hope this makes sense and helps!

[Rob Horan]

Thanks - as I mentioned above, ScriptRunner is not installed, and quite frankly, I don't have the coding chops to make this happen.

[Tinker Fadoua]

@Rob Horan 

Your idea makes totally sense, we have something similar in my company unfortunately I can not get into too many details. However we were able to create a similar scenario using ScriptRunner. Lot of scripts, some behaviours, and it is working like a charm.

When user selects one specific issue type it triggers the creation of 24 Subtasks. Some fields on the parents issue are read only and no one can make changes to the subtasks.

However we do let user clone the subtasks in case they want to make some changes .

I hope this helps.

Best,

Fadoua

[Rob Horan]

Thanks - ScriptRunner is not installed, and quite frankly, I don't have the coding chops to make this happen.  I probably should have mentioned I was looking for a code/script-free solution :)