Why doesn't issue History show changes to subtasks?

[Randy O_Neal]

It appears that adding, removing, or changing the subtasks associated to a story or a bug are not recorded in the history of the story or bug.  I'm wondering if I'm missing something.

We had a situation where a story was reassigned to someone due to capacity and load balancing.  When the new assignee opened the story, he was surprised to see there were no subtasks associated to the story.  At first, he concluded that the act of reassigning the issue might have wiped out any previous subtasks.  I convinced him that was not the case... but then I looked to the history to see when/where subtasks might have been added or removed... and I was surprised to find I do not see changes to any subtasks being recorded in the issue history.  I guess I just need to confirm this is the case.  Our final conclusion in this particular case seems to be the original assignee of the story had not tasked out his story as he should have... thus, the new assignee would need to do so.

If there is any place where this detailed history is preserved and viewable?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

Actually, it is recorded in the history.

The sub-task history will show you "parent was changed from X to Y".  I suspect it doesn't put anything on the parent history because you'd end up recording it three times!  Once on the sub-task, once on X and once on Y.

[Randy O_Neal]

That makes sense... but in the situation where you are looking at a story and wondering where the subtasks are... there are two possible answers.  First: there were never any subtasks.  Second: there were subtasks and they were either deleted or moved to another issue.  I would have expected the story history to have shown something... but it doesn't.  That would have only required one history change, namely, that of the parent.

I get that it's complicated, and I get that you have to draw the line somewhere.  It just feels like a rather gaping hole in the audit trail.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I do think it should be in the history of the issue the sub-task was moved from, even if it's just a line saying "used to contain these subtasks: <link-1><link2><etc>" so that you know and can go look at the history of the sub-task if you want to know exactly when it moved.

[Dave Mathijs · Accepted solution]

Hi @Randy O_Neal , Indeed, it seems there's no log whatsoever about subtasks in the History tab of the Activity panel in an issue.

No idea if third-party apps do gather logs of subtasks being added, removed or changed.

[Randy O_Neal]

That's a real shame.  The manipulation of the subtasks for a given issue is so fundamental to how we use Jira to track our activities... this seems like a huge miss on Jira's part.  I could probably spend an hour on a soapbox about this subject... but I won't.  If anyone knows of something which might provide additional insight into the history of the subtasks for a given issue... please chime in!

Thanks, @Dave Mathijs for confirming what I suspected.

[Dave Mathijs]

I totally agree with you there and was surprised as well.