What is the purpose of the Cumulative Logged Time field?

[Steven Janvrin]

What is the purpose of the Cumulative Logged Time field in Jira Software? I can't find any information online regarding the purpose and use case for this field.

Regards - Steve Janvrin.

[John Funk]

Hi Steven,

That field is designed to sum up time logged on sub-tasks to the parent task. So you put the field on the parent and it shows you the sum of the time logged on all of the children. 

[Steven Janvrin]

Thanks John - let me try this. I put the field on a Story, and all that happened was that I could update this field manually. Based on your response that's not the behavior I expected, but I may not have had sub-tasks associated with that Story. I'll do some more testing to see what happens with a Story and sub-tasks and an Epic with multiple Stories associated.

Steve.

[Steven Janvrin]

I tested this as follows:

First, I added the Cumulative Logged Time field to a Story with associated sub-tasks. The sub-tasks were updated with time logged. The CLT field did not summarize the logged time for the sub-tasks.

Second, I added the CLT field to an Epic with associated Stories. The Stories were updated with time logged. The CLT field did not summarize the logged time for the Stories.

In both cases Jira indicated that the CLT field wasn't being displayed because the field was empty. When I added a value for this field to the Epic and the Story the value was displayed, but the value I added was arbitrary and wasn't the expected total.

[Steven Janvrin]

If anyone else can shed light on how to use this field I'd appreciate it.