create a predefine number of subtasks

[Dd]

Is there a way in automation that upon a manual trigger, the automation will create 27 subtasks in a loop?

Basically I want to do the following:

Create a task called - MyTask

From it manually trigger an automation rule that will generate 27 subtasks named My-Task - Job X where X is increasing from 0 to 26.

So when completed, I will have:

Task: MyTask

  - Subtask: MyTask - Job 0

  - Subtask: MyTask - Job 1

  - Subtask: MyTask - Job 2

.

.

.

  - Subtask: MyTask - Job 26

[Bill Sheboy · Accepted solution]

Hi @Dd 

If you care about the subtask ordering, or each subtask has unique values, they will need to be added, one by one, as @John Funk suggests.

If you do not care about the ordering, they could be created with an advanced branch over the values.  The source of the values could be a created variable or a lookup table.

For example:

• action: create variable
  • name: varJobList
  • smart value: Job 0, Job 1, Job 2
• advanced branch:
  • name: varJob
  • smart value: {{varJobList.split(", ")}}
    • action: create subtask, referencing {{varJob}}

It is possible to even automate the creation of varJobList for your scenario, if you have a fixed number of issues to create.

If the number of issues is dynamic (e.g., from an issue field count) the solution is more complicated.  Here is a post describing a method to do that: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Software-questions/how-to-use-jira-automation-to-create-multiple-issues-based-on-a/qaq-p/2443240

Kind regards,
Bill

[Dd]

Is there a way to loop over all subtasks of a parent? 

I noticed that cloning will clone subtasks as well, so I can just generate one such task and then clone and loop over the "new" subtasks.

I couldn't find a smart value referring to a list of subtasks

Thanks

[Bill Sheboy]

For an issue, the smart value is:

{{issue.subtasks}}

That only contains some of the subtasks fields, such as link, summary, status, etc.  To access all of the fields, they would need to be branched to or loaded from a lookup issues action.

[John Funk]

Hi Dd,

I don't know a way of creating the sub-tasks via loop. I think you will have to include a separate action for each one in the rule to create them.

[Dd]

Sadly, it seems that this is the case (for now at least).

Thanks

[Ryan_Buschmeyer]

We have this same issue as well.  We have certain Epics that will need Sub-task creation based on a number of weeks spanning the Epic (weekly check-ins).  Our solution was to use Zapier to loop this task.  We created a field "Number of Weeks" and then use that field to tell Zapier how many times to iterate the loop.

We also introduced a field to tell Zapier to not process this again (Zap Complete).

Hope this helps somebody.