Coupling Fixversion Between Parent and Sub-Task

[Tanner Wortham]

My Goal

I would like the value of fixversion of a sub-task to always match its parent's value of fixversion. In other words, if the parent fixversion changes from v1 to v2, then all sub-task should also change fixversion from v1 to v2.

Why

The layout of the task board in Greenhopper filters items by fixversion, and I'd like all sub-tasks to be present under its parent. It's also true in our case that each parent item belongs to exactly one fixversion and that children of the parent should always belong to the same fixversion. I'd like to programatically enforce this rule.

(Side note: I'm a scrum guy by trade. I'd like to get my guys to fully adopt scrum and begin using Rapid Boards so I'm trying to gentlely nudge them in the right direction. For now, this fixversion deal is my incremental step in the right direction. But that's neither here nor there. ;)

Random Thoughts

Things I've tried or considered:

• Remove fixversion from the sub-task template. That's a no go. When doing this, there's has nothing to filter on, and the task board doesn't show the sub-task at all. When I add fixversion back to the field configuration, it shows shows again on the task board.
• Adjust the value when the workflow is advanced. This is a possible solution, but it's not ideal since the value doesn't get adjusted immediately. Instead, it only gets adjusted when a sub-task is advanced.
• Use a custom field to tightly couple parent to child. I don't believe you can configure the task board to filter off a field other than fixversion so unless someone knows different, I have to rule this solution out. Also, I've never tried to use a custom field in such a way so I'm uncertain if this would even be a viable solution.

Ideas anyone? I'm open to creative solutions. Hugs (and karma) to the person with the solution. ;)

[Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist] · Accepted solution]

If you are okay with development, write a listener to update fixVersion on subtasks whenever parent task's fixVersion changes.

If you go with option1, ie. removing the fixVersion from subtasks, you can filter them using the parent tasks fixVersion using JQL tricks plugin. It is a commercial plugin and hence depends on your preference.

[Tanner Wortham]

i've done some custom development once so i'm not opposed to it. it can be a bit time consuming since my coding skills are rough. i used the groovy in the past to write some code to execute as a post script. i'll have a look at groovy to see if i can use it again to solve this problem. thanks. :)

[Tanner Wortham]

a question for you ... thus far, it seems my solution is to review the fixversion of the children whenever the parent is updated, but that seems inefficient. is there any way the listener can be intelligent enough to know that the parent fixversion was updated so its children must be too?

[Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist]]

You can get the changelog from the event and see if fixVersion was modified in parent.