Jira Automation for Epic “Consumed Hours” field behaving inconsistently

[Laura Jiménez]

Hi all,

I’m encountering a problem with a Jira Cloud automation that recalculates “Consumed Hours” in epics based on worklogs from Tempo. I suspect there’s a bug or misconfiguration, and I'm looking for advice.

Situation

• I have epics representing hour packages for clients.
• Each epic has several tasks, with hours logged in Tempo.
• An automation was created to:
  1. Update a custom field “Billable Seconds” on tasks with Tempo worklogs.
  2. Recalculate “Consumed Hours” in tasks and the parent epic.
  3. Calculate “Remaining Hours” as Contracted Hours – Consumed Hours.
  4. Transition the epic to Inactive when remaining hours reach zero.

Observed issues

• Moving several tasks from one epic to another triggers recalculation. Initially, it works fine, but at a certain point:
  • The Consumed Hours field in the epic decreases instead of increasing.
  • Total hours in Tempo remain correct.
• Editing a worklog on a task sometimes resets its consumed hours to zero, but editing another worklog fixes it.
• Logs show messages like:
  “The work item didn’t match the specified JQL. The chosen rule actor doesn’t have permissions…”
• The automation runs as Automation for Jira.

What Isuspect

• Some tasks may be inaccessible to the automation actor due to permission schemes, security levels, or project roles.
• Using JQL conditions might be causing inconsistent execution.

What I'm looking for

• Guidance on how to make such an automation robust across epics and tasks.
• Recommendations on JQL vs Issue Field conditions for these recalculations.
• Any known issues with Automation for Jira losing access to tasks after moving them between epics.

Thanks in advance for any insights!

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Laura Jiménez 

For a question like this, context is important for the community to help.  Please post the following:

• an image of your complete automation rule in a single image for continuity
• images of any relevant actions / conditions / branches
• an image of the audit log details showing the rule execution
• for each symptom not working as expected, explain why you believe that to be the case

Until we see those...

Without seeing your rule and the work items involved, I suspect this is either a timing, a work item update, chained rule execution, and / or rule scope issue.  When you see several symptoms like you describe, there may be multiple causes, and so working on them one-by-one may help.

Also you describe moving Tasks from one Epic to another.  That will likely require updating both Epics: the original one and the new one.  Again without seeing your rules, this may require a more complicated rule structure to handle the change of parent.

Please note this is only one of the possible ways the Epic / Task relationship could change in a manner which impacts your field totals / values.  To learn more, please see this article describing related work item sum / synching:

https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Automation-articles/Automation-concepts-Sum-or-Synch-Fields-with-Parent-and-Child/ba-p/3162890

Kind regards,
Bill