Confusion with Connected Items Automation

[Stacey Steiger]

Hi there,

I am struggling with automation on connected items in JPD. I believe that my struggle is related to needs that may not yet be supported, or where community examples or looms are outdated due to the recent automation UI updates.

Lets assume that I have 2 idea types, one called "feature" and one called "feature request" and we have enabled the hierarchies and connections appropriately. 

Now I have enterprise customer success teams that want to see the basic roadmap status of the feature related to their customers' "feature requests" without having to navigate away from the view of requests.

I watched Tanguys loom from a few months ago, and extrapolated a simple way to do this using the new automation updates, based on the trigger being a feature request being linked to a feature an this is working great. 

What I cannot figure out how to do is two things: 

1. What if the field value changes on the feature and I want that value to propogate "down" to all feature requests? is this supported and how do I do this? 
2. what if the link was made prior to this rule being created? Can i apply the rule in arrears? 

Thank you for any guidance.

[Bill Sheboy · Accepted solution]

Hi @Stacey Steiger 

My understanding is the connected items feature in Jira Product Discovery (JPD) uses work item linking.  And if you already have your other rule working, you have identified the correct link type (and link direction) to use for updates.  For your specific questions...

As you saw in Tanguy's video, JQL may be used to identify the relevant, connected items.  Thus, I expect you may write a JQL expression relative to your trigger one to get the sibling "feature requests" to update using a Branch on JQL.

For the updating of pre-existing items, this is a common need after a rule is created.  One way to solve that is to create a temporary rule with a Scheduled trigger and JQL to find the items to process, and then run that until "caught up".  When done, disable or delete that rule.

For both of these cases, I recommend pausing to create the JQL outside of rules, testing with example work items (i.e., "feature" and "feature request") to confirm it works as expected.  Then add the JQL in your rules, making it dynamic / relative to the trigger work items.

Kind regards,
Bill