Moving subtask to in-progress doesn't transition parent task to in-progress

[Nick Brook]

I'm pretty sure this Just Worked in my last company, again using a standard JIRA Cloud setup with no modifications or plugins. However I can't figure out a way to get this to work short of installing an external (paid) plugin, which seems crazy.

Simply put: when I drag a sub-task to "In progress", the parent task should be marked as "In progress".

[Nick Brook]

But that's just mad isn't it? What is the point of subtasks then? 

If I drag across a subtask from "todo" to "in progress" why would i *not* want to transition the parent task to "in progress"?

Are you saying that the only way to do this now is to actually *pay* for a third party plugin? I'm fairly sure that I didn't do that in my previous setup

[Nick Brook]

Ah, but I've just confirmed that this didn't work in the old setup either :-(

Ok, looks like I need the plugin then. How annoying

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Why not? 

Because your process might be using sub-tasks to represent dependencies or other process complexities (I can't do anything with the parent until the sub-tasks are complete).

Also, you (or someone else) are working on the sub-task and not the parent at all.  The sub-task may well be part of it, but as you've delegated all of the task into a sub-task, you can't say the parent is in-progress when you're actually progressing the sub-task.

Most of us run into processes where a sub-task's status is entirely independent of the main task, and a parent can be unstarted even when its sub-tasks are in progress or even complete.

[Nick Brook]

But if your subtask has been started then surely your parent task has been started? If there is no linkage at all then why make it a subtask? Logically, if a part of a solution is in progress that the whole solution is in progress.

[Nick Brook]

So presumably I need to use JWME to fix this? Which has got to win an award for the most insanely over-complex UI (which currently does not match their documentation, at least for "Transition parent issue").

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Nope, the sub-tasks can be completely independent in may processes.

I also forgot time-tracking - if our environment measures time by status, then you really cannot have this.  I start <subtask> at 3pm and finish at 5pm, so I've worked 2 hours on it.  I've also worked, simultaneously, 2 hours on the parent because that got started too.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't start the parent when one of its sub-tasks starts, just that it's not right for some processes.  It's definitely right for others.

Yes, you can use JMWE for it, or one of the other automation or scripting add-ons.

[Nick Brook]

Well, I'm still not convinced. Surely the parent is *composed* of the subtasks, not related to them. If you have started work on a subtask then *by definition* you have started work on the parent. If that is not the case then it's not a subtask: it's just a jira task that is related to your 'parent' task.

And if I need a plugin for this, why does the default behaviour ask me if I want to mark the parent Story as Done when the last subtask is Done (without plugins)?

I've pretty much given up on this for now. None of the solutions seem to solve this properly for a reasonable price. 

[Jack Brickey]

@Nick Brook did you try automation lite (free)?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Sometimes they are, sometimes they are not.  And a lot of processes simply don't need (or are broken by) the parent assuming its status from the sub-tasks.

If Atlassian had built it in (which I think they should have, although I understand the complexity of having to configure it so that every parent knows what their next status should be) and not given the option to turn it off, we'd be having the opposite conversation - lots of people asking how to disable it.

[Arun Aravind]

In that case, the obvious choice would be to expose it as a setting, rather than having nothing at all. Isn't it?

[Jason Selvidge]

I know I'm coming to this conversation waaaaay late, but it just defies logic (for me at least) that a sub-task is in progress but its parent task is not.

For me, creating a parent-child relationship between a task and many sub-tasks is a way for me to break down a bigger task in to many smaller sub-tasks.  The parent task is not complete until all sub-tasks are complete.

If that's the context, then when one of the child sub-tasks transitions to In Progress, then logically and by definition, its parent also transitions to In Progress if it's not already there.  My $0.02 anyway.

[Jack Brickey]

you might try using Automation Lite for Jira. I haven't tried it for this but worth a shot. 

[Vishnukumar Vasudevan]

You can not achieve this without customizing your workflow. Also, you would need custom plugin to add such post-fuctions to your workflow. 

[Alexey Matveev]

Hello,

It can not be done out of the box.