Automatically have epic status match child with earliest status?

[Erick Bailey]

I got a request to have the epic status automatically match the status of the status of the user story underneath it with the status closest to the beginning of our workflow.

For Example if we have the workflow of New > Step 1 > Step 2 > Step 3 > Step 4 > Done

and the epic has stories with the status of Step1, Step3 it should show it at Step 1, if the story with the status of Step 3 moves to Step 4 the epic should stay at Step 1. Likewise if a status below goes "backwards" the epic should reflect that. 

We are using Jira Server essentially out of the box and cannot use third party plugings, I was hoping there was a way to do this in automation.

[Stephan Shere · Accepted solution]

Hi Eric,

I cannot confirm that the usage is the same for Server because the eco-system for Cloud and Server is a bit different. However, we use Automation to transition.

Your rules should be similar to the setup here:

You can setup a rule for each stage, you'll be able to see your Epic's Status change to the status that's set within the rules. In our case, we only pay attention within this rule to 'Done', in your case, you can set it to handle the various stages.

Hopefully this helps.

[Erick Bailey]

Hi Stephan, if I am reading that right it will transition the issue if every story underneath it matches the transitioned status?

Also we unfortunately have around 16 statuses and I was hoping there was logic that can determine if a status is "before" another in the workflow, to avoid making 16 rules, but if that has to be then so be it.

[Stephan Shere]

Yes, you are correct with the transitioning. Unfortunately, sometimes setting up workflows to be tailored to your needs can be cumbersome. We've found this out way too many times, but sometimes you need to get dirty to get things done the way you want, until they can be done more seamlessly. 

The good thing is you can set this up once globally and be done with it!

I'd suggest you play around with the rules, there maybe an easier way to handle the statuses. We typically use 4, however, they are categorized still between the "Todo", "In Progress", and "Done".

It may not work for your needs, but may I suggest you create the various statuses categories and match your specifics under each... e.g.

Backlog -> Todo
Started -> Todo
In Progress -> In Progress
To Test -> Todo
Testing -> In Progress
Review -> Todo
Reviewed -> Done

This way you're still only dealing with the 3 categories, and can have many columns as statuses.

Unfortunately the draw back I believe would be you'd see only "Todo", "In Progress", and "Done" on the epic's. I could be mistaken however.