How to change Epic summary to flow to child issues

[atrout]

Hello! I am needing assistance. I am trying to create an automation that if the summary of the epic gets changed at all that it will flow to all the child issues as well. However, the thing that I am stuck on is that each child issue also has it's own summary that needs to stay unchanged. I have done some testing but when I use the copy from parent summary it pushes the name longer and longer because it is not replacing/removing the previous summary before it was edited.

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @atrout 

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

Whenever asking for help with an Automation Rule please provide a copy of the Automation Rule you are working on and the details of each step.

How are you initially copying the Epic summary to child issues? If that is a separate rule, please show us that rule too.

[atrout]

Thank you for the welcome and quick response!

Here is the screenshot of what is happening- each time I rename the summary, it pushes it over.

Here is what the rule looks like that I added to react to when a summary gets changed.

Lastly, this is the rule that has the child summaries that I need to stay with each task:

[Trudy Claspill]

Review what I've written below and let me know if I understand your need correctly?

You initially create the child issue via automation and set its summary to 

<Epic Summary> Task Summary

Then the first time you change the parent Epic Summary, in its child issues you want to change the summary to be

<Epic New Summary> <Epic Original Summary> Task Summary

And if you change the summary of the Epic 2..n more times then in the child issues you want to just replace <Epic New Summary> with the new Summary from the Epic, and keep in the child issue the <Epic Original Summary> Task Summary text.

Example:

1. Epic created with summary "Original Summary"

2. Child issue created with summary "Original Summary Task Summary"

3. Epic summary changed to "New Summary".

4. Child issue summary changed to "New Summary Original Summary Task Summary"

5. Epic summary changed to "Changed Again"

6. Child issue summary changed to "Changed Again Original Summary Task"

[atrout]

Perhaps there is a way to flow the Epic summary to the task summaries via a different code and rule so that it doesn't live on each individual task summary?

[atrout]

Yes! That is what is happening to the summaries. Any advice on how I can fix it?

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @atrout 

The parent Epic key and summary should already be displayed in the child issue Details panel:

You should not need to otherwise copy the parent Epic summary to the child issues.

[atrout]

Yeah unfortunately, the way my team uses it, we need it to show on each task. If you know a code I can add into the task, that would be very helpful! Maybe something like this code? {{triggerIssue.latest.summary}}

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @atrout 

You said in your last reply that you need the parent Epic's Summary to show in each task. How does the Parent field not satisfy that?

The only other option to make the parent Epic's Summary visible in each child task is to copy it into some field in each child task. If you created a separate custom text field in the child Task issue type specifically for the parent Epic's Summary then you could just copy the value to that field with an Automation Rule. Then you would not have to worry about try to parse out original vs. changed text from the child Task's Summary field.

[atrout]

That option sounds like it would work! Could you possibly show me a screenshot of what that could look like?

Thanks for all your help!!

[Trudy Claspill]

Which option? Using a separate custom field?

How does the Parent field not satisfy your needs? It shows the parent Epic Summary in every child issue already.

[atrout]

Yes, using the separate custom field in each task

[Trudy Claspill]

Can you explain how does the Parent field not satisfy your needs? It shows the parent Epic Summary in every child issue already.

Adding custom fields and automation rules should be done only when there is not another native solution that satisfies the need.

[atrout]

Can you show me how the parent Epic Summary looks in the child issue? Because the side panel is not what we use. We use the top like so:

[Trudy Claspill]

By default the Parent field will show in the Details panel on the right.

If you would prefer to have it over on the left you can change the Issue Layout to move the field from the Contexts Fields are (1) to the Description field area (2) instead.

[atrout]

Oooh that is great! That should definitely solve it for me! Thank you!!