Automated Date Population

[Travis Hill]

Have an interesting question on a rule that I have not started building just yet that I was hoping to get guidance from yall on.

So right now we have Features in Jira, as child tickets teams also create Epics that are linked to that Feature via a parent field.

The epics are required to have target start / target end dates to roughly gauge when work may finish (or assess delays).

A Feature may have 5-10 child Epics linked up to it all with varying Target start / target end dates. Essentially we would like to 'scan' these dates whenever there is an update and then add the latest date to the Feature level.

For example:

• Feature A - No Target End
  • Epic 1 - Target End 6/30/25
  • Epic 2 - Target End 8/30/25
  • Epic 3  - Target End 9/30/25
  • Epic 4 - No Target End added

The automation should scan those dates and put 9/30/25 into the Target End field on the Feature level.

I assume I need to create a variable that stores all the target ends of the child tickets ,which I can do (because yall have helped with this in the past), what I dont know how to do is to only take the one target end (the one furthest out) to place at the feature level. Any thoughts? Thanks in advance!

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Travis Hill 

Without seeing your actual rule...

Perhaps try using the Lookup Issues / Work Items action with JQL to gather the children, and then use the min (or max) list functions with the date fields:

• https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/jira-automation-actions/#Lookup-issues
• https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/jira-smart-values-lists/#list.min
• https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/jira-smart-values-lists/#list.max

Kind regards,
Bill

[Travis Hill]

That is an excellent recommendation. Let me try it out and get back to you if we run into issues.

[Travis Hill]

@Bill Sheboy looks like its erroring out on the very last step: 

When I try to edit the target end:

[Bill Sheboy]

That expression is not correct.  An example to set that field could be:

• trigger: some trigger, returning the Epic
• action: lookup work items, with JQL to return the children of the Epic
• smart values condition:
  • first value: {{lookupIssues.size|0}}
  • condition: greater than
  • second value: 0
• action: edit work item 
  • the value you want would be below; please substitute the custom field ID for your field for the 12345 value

{
  "fields": {
    "customfield_10023": "{{lookupIssues.customfield_12345.max.jiraDate}}"
  }
}

Please adjust the rule accordingly if the trigger work item is not the Epic.

[Travis Hill]

Unfortunately, seems like im still getting the same error.

[Bill Sheboy]

Please show images of your complete Edit Work Item action and of the audit log details for the rule execution (with the areas at the right side expanded). 

I also recommend writing that entire JSON expression to the audit log before the edit to confirm it contains what you expect when the rule runs.

Thanks!

[Travis Hill]

Looks like I need to rework it. Its not pulling in what I want in the logs. I will get back to you on this one!