Automation of a subtask inside epic

[Cesar Arevalo]

Hello all, 

Wondering if anyone can help me. I have an EPIC that I have multiple other subtask and because these subtask have multiple level of completions in order to show movement of these items for reporting, I am trying to split them and use automation. 

What I am trying to achieve is that once one subtask is complete (DONE) A new one is created inside the same epic and same name except this one will have a different expected work inside, and once this new one is completed (DONE) possibly one more is created, I think this can be done but don't now how to set the rule. 

I am using a licensed Jira not enterpised but the premium version for a small company of 50 users, any help will be much appreciated. 

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Cesar Arevalo 

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

What is your level of experience with creating Automation Rules?

Jira Administrator access may be needed to create Automation Rules, or Jira Project Administrator access if the Jira Admins have provided that level of access.

The basic rule structure would be

Trigger: Work item transitioned
  To: Done
Action: Clone work item (or Create work item)

This would need to be augmented with Conditions that can determine if the item that transitioned is one that should be cloned. You have not yet told us anything specific about the criteria show we can't advise you on the specifics yet.

How do you determine that a particular issue fits this scenario, besides the fact that it transitions to Done?

And how do you determine that another item would need to be created from that second item?

[Cesar Arevalo]

Hello, 

i have admin to space and jira. 

Let me give more specific content with hopes someone can help. 

I created an epic inside the Epic I a child work items and then subtask. 

The subtasks are so long that if I want to track they will be at Zero % completion for most of the time, and will show complete until I reach the final scope, so instead my goal is to create the task for the 2 items so I can track progress of completion, and as each task is being completed, the automation recreates the task with the next two scopes and therefore I continue to see % completed, once I get to the final task I want that creation to stop. 

not sure if this can be possible but this is the best way I can describe my need, and I apologize if I sound lost but I am fairly new and any help or guidance will be great to get.  

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello Cesar,

Thank you for that additional information.

What type of Space are you using? Click the... button next to the Space name in the navigation panel on the left. What do the last two lines in the pop-up say? It will be something like:

Software space

Company-managed

Both lines are important to help us answer your questions.

If you are new to Jira you might find value in going through some of the free, on-demand training available through the Learning link at the top of the Community pages. There are courses for all skill levels, for users, project admins, Jira admins, and Organization admins.

I think it would be valuable to us to have a better understanding of the type of work you are trying to track. Can you provide an example of what you would specify for an Epic, for the child items in the Epic, and for subtasks in those child items?

Can you provide more information about why it is undesirable to create items for all the work at the beginning? Without having all the work defined you will not have an accurate report of how much work has been completed and how much remains to be done.

How are you measuring the percent complete? At what levels do you need to measure completeness; individual sutasks, their parent items, or the Epics?

Does the work take a lot of effort to complete, or is there a lot of unproductive time such that the work takes not much effort but a lot of calendar time?

[Cesar Arevalo]

Business space, Company Managed 

 I am trying to track project status and provide visibility into task completion percentages. The reason I did not originally create multiple tasks is because I was unaware that Jira has limitations when it comes to displaying percentage completion at the task level. Some task will require more efforts vs others and not able to provide a full percentage ( Completion / total tasks) 2 task 1 complete = 50%

Currently, the Epic contains child work items. For example, we may have multiple cabinets of various types, and each cabinet type has different locations, which are set up as subtasks. Initially, I created a simple checklist outlining the required steps to complete a cabinet installation  such as anchoring, installing wheels, painting, and so on.

However, using this structure, I am unable to properly track percentage completion. A cabinet installation can take up to one month, and during that time I want to be able to communicate that we are 30% or 50% complete. The cabinet may be usable at 50% completion, but I cannot accurately communicate that status because the task does not reflect progress until the final checklist item is completed, which does not meet my reporting needs.

Since I have already created many tasks under this structure, I started considering an automation-based approach. My thought process is to apply automation so that when the first phase or step is completed, a new subtask is automatically created for the next phase. This would allow me to see measurable progress at each stage. For example, once we reach 50% completion, we can utilize the cabinets operationally while continuing to progress through automated subtasks until we ultimately reach 100% completion

[Trudy Claspill]

Thank you for that additional information.

It does not seem like having an incomplete task list at the beginning is going to enable you to accurately report on completeness as you will not have the full scope of the work to be done. How could you measure completeness without that?

Do you know approximately how long each subtasks will take?

You could add an Original time estimate for each subtasks. Have the people working on the task long the time the work. The time they log reduces the Remaining estimate. You can have the parent of the subtask display the time rolled up from the subtasks 

Completeness is then based on 

Time logged / ( time logged + time remaining)

If you don't want to make your users log time you could automate logging the Original Estimate value when the subtask is marked as complete.

[Cesar Arevalo]

Can you help me with creating a rule, that is really all I would like to get out of this at this time. 

I tried to google and watch tutorials and I just can’t seem to figure it out. If you can please assist me with a rule creation. 

I have the Epic, then Child work, and then subtask. I just want to create a rule to have the subtask create a new one once the status changes to done, I want to repeat the rule a few times and that is it. 

I want the rule to only apply to the subtask inside the epic and not any other task, I can probably use keywords if I need to. 

[Trudy Claspill]

Can you provide links to the instructions you are following to create the rule? Can you tell us which step in the instructions you are struggling with?

I provided the basic rule structure in my first reply. If you want it to apply only to subtasks then add a Condition after the Trigger. Select the Work items field value condition. For field select Issue Type. For condition select Equals. For value select Sub-task.

The rule will run for every subtask that transitions to Done.

If you want the rule to run for subtasks in only one Space, create the rule by first going to the Space Settings for that Space, then select Automation.

Please try constructing the rule. If it doesn't work as you want, provide screen images of the entire rule and the log from the execution of the rule, as well as explaining how the results don't match your requirements.