How can I move stories and tasks on the same Agile Board?

[Hayley Hinkle]

My subtasks are nested under my stories on the Agile Board. I can move the tasks across the board, but I cannot move the stories. My tasks have To Do, In Progress, and Complete as their statuses. My stories break down In Progress to multiple statuses to show visibility into where we are with story. Having overlapping statuses causes you to only be able to move tasks and not stories across the board. Please help!! 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

To move an issue from one column to another, you must have:

• A column definition that includes the status you wish to move the issue to (columns can contain many status)
• A workflow that has a transition from the current status to the new one that is in the column
• The permissions to allw you to perform that transition

So, you need to read your board definition alongside the workflow you've got for the stories, checking the status, transitions and conditions on the transitions.

[Hayley Hinkle]

I have my workflow transitions set up properly. I can move stories, but once they have subtasks, I can only move the subtasks and not the story.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Ok, that sounds like you may have a "condition" on the transtion that blocks your permission to move the story (my 3rd point, although I don't explicitly say "condition" in there). It's probably the "you may not move the story through this transition unless all its sub-tasks are in status x, y or z" type condition.

[Hayley Hinkle]

Where would I find a "condition" on the transition?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

You'd need to open the workflow in edit mode, then click on the transition that you want to check - that gets you a box with the conditions (and validators and post-functions) on it.

[Hayley Hinkle]

I checked and I don't have any conditions associated with any of my transitions.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Not even "user must have 'tranisition permission'"?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Ah, another couple of things.... You're not actually expected to move stories on really. The general usage is that when you flag all the sub-tasks as "done", that;s when a story is automatically moved to done as well. However, there's a couple of tests I'd like to look at too, if possible: 1. What happens when a story has all its sub-tasks moved to "done" on the board? 2. Can you look at the Story in plain JIRA - does the transition you want to use appear there? 3. Can you check that the status you want to move the story to is included in a column on the board?

[Hayley Hinkle]

Hi Nic, sorry i never responded to you. I didn't have enough points to keep adding comments (guess I can only post a few times within 24 hours). Anyways... I had the columns in the board filtered by story. Once I removed that, I was able to see all tasks (with a header of the story they were under) and can move all issue types across the board. Thanks for all your help!!

[Chris Kenny]

Hi Nic

I wanted to ask a follow up question on the above. I have just started to use the JIRA cloud instance having previously used older versions of JIRA server so im new to some of the quirks and features of the new JIRA versions. The above is causing confusing for the team. If as an example I am using a basic workflow of To do >> In progress >> Done and both my stories and subtasks follow the same format. With the basic configuration I have noticed that once I have moved ALL my sub-tasks to Done i then get the option to put the story to a state of done. 

To me the second i start progress on one of the subtasks my story should transition from To do >> In progress as well (but it remains in the To do status until all subtasks are done and then it jumps to done).

I have read that using the Enhanced workflow plugin i can configure the workflow to perform a post transition to move the parent issue. Before i do this to my instance i wanted to check whether there was an alternative method you had come across?

Thanks

Chris

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Yes, the parent story -> done is built in, but it's harder to automate "transition parent" because it's not always right in terms of process, and it's possible to configure JIRA such that it would be nonsense.

So, you'll need a bit of code - I'd use the Script Runner (heck, I've got the t-shirts, let alone using it for years and working alongside Jamie), but there are other options.  I think the automation add-on could do it as well, and you've already mentioned the workflow enhancer.

[Chris Kenny]

Thanks Nic, appreciate the response and backs up what i thought