How to use Jira automation to close epic of story "and" sub tasks

[Chris S_]

Hello community,

About closing epics when child issues are closed, what branch rule can cover "both" Epic->story and also Epic->sub task?

This rule works if stories (or bugs) are 'completed':

And this works for closing an epic when the child issue is a sub task:

These are two different branch rules, 1) For Epic (parent) and 2) For Parent.

Though how can an Epic with, for example, 1 story child and 1 sub-task be closed?  (where the sub task is directly of the epic, not of the story)

• The 'For Epic (parent)' branch does not seem to recognize sub tasks as a  direct child type.

The desired result is epic is transitioned to complete, when either the story or the sub task is transitioned to complete.

Thank you,

Chris

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Chris S_ 

For Jira Data Center, there is no branch that spans both types as there are different linkages for epic -> story and story -> sub-task.

You may address this using an if / else condition and branches inside.  For example:

• trigger: issue transitioned to Complete
• if / else condition:
  • field condition: issue type equals story
  • branch: to epic parent
    • related issues condition: check if all sibling stories are Complete
    • action: transition the epic parent
• else / if
  • field condition: issue type equals sub-task
  • branch: to parent (i.e., the story)
    • related issues condition: check if all sibling sub-tasks are Complete
    • action: transition the story

With Jira Cloud, a rule like this is simpler (in theory) as the parent field is used for the relationships of both.

Also...do you want this to be recursive, in that the completion of a sub-task could lead to completion of the grandparent epic?

Kind regards,
Bill

[Chris S_]

Hi @Bill Sheboy, Let's say an epic has 1 story and also 1 sub-task (direct child of the epic), if the story is marked complete first, then the epic should not transition, since the sub-task is still open.  However, once the sub-task is also transitioned to complete, the epic should now automatically transition to complete.  The challenge is how to  validate both conditions before transitioning the epic.

thank you,

Chris

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Chris S_ 

Sorry for the delay in responding as I have been offline for a few weeks.

First, I believe sub-tasks are children of Story, Task, and Bug issue types, and not of Epic ones.  Let's assume you meant the Epic has one or more Stories, each with zero-to-many Sub-tasks.

To validate all of them are completed before transitioning the epic, you would need to gather the keys of all of them first and test them.  I believe that can be done using the Lookup Issues action and the Related Issues Condition.  Please validate this with testing as I am using Jira Cloud, and not Server / Data Center version.

For example, let's assume the trigger issue is a Story:

• trigger: issue transitioned to complete
• condition: issue type is Story
• action: lookup issues, to gather the other children of the Epic with JQL

"Epic Link" = {{triggerIssue.key}}

• action: create a variable to parse out the child and grandchild keys of the Epic
  • name: varKeyList
  • smart value:

{{#lookupIssues}},{{key}}{{#subtasks}},{{key}}{{/}}{{/}}

• Related Issues Condition: using the variable, create JQL to gather all of the Story-level and Subtask-level issues, testing no issues are still incomplete  (i.e., none found)

key IN ( {{varKeyList.substringAfter(",")}} ) AND statusCategory != Done

• branch: to the epic parent
  • action: transition  the issue

Kind regards,
Bill