Why does Parent Issue loose subtasks when moved back to beginning of workflow?

[Steven VanderVelde]

Using a jira board to track assets. Some assets come in a kit and the idea was to have the kit components as sub-tasks under one main issue for the kit. When the kit is moved to 'in progress' the subtasks are still linked to the kit, but when the kit is moved back to 'To Do' the subtasks are no longer linked to the parent kit issue

Update:
May be because one of our groovy scripts remove links from the the parent issue. Is a Subtask considered a link and if so what type?

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Are the issues really sub-task issue types or are the other issue types linked to the main issue?

Do you have the issue key for one of those sub-tasks that has disappeared? If so, try browsing for it to see if the issue actually still exists and has been modified or has truly been deleted.

[Steven VanderVelde]

the issues are really sub-task issue types and the sub-tasks are not deleted they just have no parent anymore

[Steven VanderVelde]

```

IssueLink link in linkMgr.getOutwardLinks(issue.id){

    linkMgr.removeIssueLink(link, roboUser)
```
Does this include sub-tasks if linkMgr = ComponentAccessor.getIssueLinkManager()?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

The only way to do that is with code that removes the parent issue, forcibly, overriding the relationship that Jira enforces.

It is also possible to hide the relationship, which makes them look orphaned, but you can't do that in the workflow, you have to change the parent's issue type!

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Ah, cross commenting.  Yes, that would damage the sub-task relationships - part (not all) of it is stored as (an invisible) issue llink.

[Steven VanderVelde]

ya sorry about the two cross comments, thought the other would be a little simpler. 

If I were to add an if statement that checks for a subtask link could i do something like this:

if link.issueLinkType.name == subtask  //<-- Not sure what linkType this would be

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

My fault just as much as yours!  We can't know when someone else is going to post!

Yes, that's a good way to do it. 

Issue link types are stored in a database table that looks like this on a mostly untouched new Jira, so my guess is that you'll see the entry in the linkname column

id	linkname	inward	outward	pstyle
10100	jira_subtask_link	jira_subtask_inward	jira_subtask_outward	jira_subtask
10000	Blocks	is blocked by	blocks	NULL
10001	Cloners	is cloned by	clones	NULL
10002	Duplicate	is duplicated by	duplicates	NULL
10003	Relates	relates to	relates to	NULL
10200	Epic-Story Link	has Epic	is Epic of	jira_gh_epic_story
10201	Problem/Incident	is caused by	causes	servicedesk_automation_default_linktype

[Steven VanderVelde]

sweet thanks, this should solve the problem!

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

This suggests an automation or script (post function or listener) that is deleting or changing the parent of the sub-tasks such that they disappear from the parent issue.

Check with your admins what they have set up in the project, or listeners.