Set Feature, Story, Sub-task as ReadOnly When Portfolio Epic Moved to Next Status?

[Digvijay Singh Gehlot]

Hi Community,

I have 4 level hierarchy : Portfolio Epic > Feature > Task > Subtask in a project.

My use-case is:

When Portfolio Epic moves from In Progrss to Close status, then all it's linked children should be set as ReadOnly irrespective to Child's status.

For example:

EPIC-1000 has it's child as FEATURE-2000 

> FEATURE-2000 has it's child as TASK-3000

> TASK-3000 has it's Subtask as SUB-4000

If EPIC-1000 moves from In Progress to Closed status, then all it's Children (Features), Grand Children (Tasks) and Great Grand Children (Subtasks) should be set as ReadOnly irrespective to Child's status.

Please assist for the above if it is possible via Jira Automation Rule, scriptrunner behviors, jmwe app, etc.

Thanks 

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @Digvijay Singh Gehlot 

What problem are you trying to solve by making the descendant issues read-only?

What would you expect to happen if the Portfolio Epic status changed again to something other than Closed?

Is it a requirement that this be accomplished without changing the status of the descendant issues?

If not, then one option would be to add a status (i.e. named Read-only) to the workflow of each of those item types. Set the Properties for that status so that the issues become read-only. Create Automation rules to address moving the descendant items to that new status when the Portfolio Epic transitions.

[Digvijay Singh Gehlot]

Hi @Trudy Claspill ,

What problem are you trying to solve by making the descendant issues read-only?

Our customer's business case is,

Once Portfolio Epic moves to Closed status, then all it's linked Children (Feature), Grand Children (Task), and Great Grand Children (Subtask) should be set in ReadOnly - so that Task users should not allow to edit any task details when Epic is in Closed.

What would you expect to happen if the Portfolio Epic status changed again to something other than Closed?

All linked children should be editable when Portfolio Epic moves to any other status except Closed.

Is it a requirement that this be accomplished without changing the status of the descendant issues?

Yes, it is a typical use-case where user is allowed to move the Portfolio Epic to Closed, although, it's linked children are not moved to Closed i.e. Portfolio Epic can move to Closed, without checking the Child status and then all  the children linked via hierarchy will be set as ReadOnly automatically. 

However, it would be great if you could share the steps/ screenshots on how to configure a Jira Rule for hierarchy item types by adding a ReadOnly status, I will try it out at my end and see if it works for our customer.

Thanks

[Trudy Claspill]

Thank you for that additional information.

I'm still trying to understand the problem being solved. You've told us the solution that has been requested, but I'm still not clear on why this solution is needed.

What problem is being solved by allowing the Epic to be set to Closed when the work to complete the Epic (the descendant items) has not been completed?

I'm drilling into this to try to ensure the best solution is implemented.

I'm not aware of a way natively to set individual issues to Read-only regardless of their own status and based on the status of another issue, with only native Jira functionality. The solution that comes to mind would be, as I mentioned, changing the status of all those issues to a new value where the Properties of the Status can be used to set it to Read-only.

There might be another solution possible with third party apps, but I don't have such a solution readily available in my portfolio. And currently I don't have the bandwidth to research such a solution.

Before investing the time in explaining the details of a Read-only Status solution, though, I would like to ensure that solution will truly address the underlying problem that needs to be solved.

[Digvijay Singh Gehlot]

Hi @Trudy Claspill ,

Just to keep it simple, I wanted to check if we can set the linked children (as per Portfolio hierarchy) as Read Only when Portfolio Epic moved to a specific status.

Your suggestion worked from me and fulfilled the customer's requirement. 

I configured as blow:

1. Add Read Only status and apply Property: jira.issue.editable to specific user group on Feature, Task, Subtask workflows.
2. Create 3 jira automation rule and enable "Check to allow other rule actions to trigger this rule" in Feature, Task, Subtask rule details.
3. a) Rule A: Trigger: Work item transitioned to Closed > Condition: Issue Type = Portfolio Epic > Branch: Children > Condition: Feature > Action: Transition to Read Only
4. a) Rule B: Trigger: Work item transitioned to Read Only > Condition: Issue type = Feature > Branch: Children > Condition: Task > Action: Transition to Read Only 
5. c) Rule C: Trigger: Work item transitioned to Read Only > Condition: Issue Type = Task > Branch: Subtask > Action: Transition to Read Only

In Rule B & C, enable "Check to allow other rule actions to trigger this rule" in Rule Details.

Please kindly let me know how we can refine the above rules further as it will be a great learning for me.

Thanks

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Digvijay Singh Gehlot 

In my opinion that is the most optimized set set of rules.

If you have not already done so, you could add your Condition to check the Trigger Issue Type directly into the Trigger.

However...

This has not been addressed:

What would you expect to happen if the Portfolio Epic status changed again to something other than Closed?

All linked children should be editable when Portfolio Epic moves to any other status except Closed.

If the Portfolio Epic status is change again from Closed to something else you need different rules to make the descendants updatable again.

You can't simply remove the Property that was added to the Read-only status, as that would affect all issues assigned to that Status.

There is not a simple automation rule component to transition the descendants back to whatever status they were in prior to being set to Read-only. If you need rules to do that, you will have to augment your rules above to keep track of the previous status of each issue within a custom field in that issue. Then you can add more rules to transition the descendants back to their previous statuses.

[Digvijay Singh Gehlot]

Hi @Trudy Claspill 

Thank you for your message and for detailed explanation. I will follow it and try to configure a new rule if user wants to transition the Portfolio Epic from Closed to previous status and update you if I face any issues.

I have another question related to Children hierarchy i.e. How to Clone Children hierarchy when Portfolio Epic is Cloned. 
It would be great if you can provide your insight on this too.  

Thanks in advance.