Edit a parent and its parent's parent

[Logan Harvey]

I made an automation that edits the due date of a parent task if its child task's due date is edited to be after the parent task. This way, if a sub task due date is set after the parent task, it automatically makes them the same due date.

I've found that the subtask updates the parent tasks just fine, but not it's "grandparent" Epic parent. Not sure if there is a way to have this loop back and check if the parent task that is updated also has a parent task above its parent that needs updating.

I've tried moving the If Issue fields condition around and seeing if it makes a difference, but I haven't been successful.

Any tips or insights on if this is possible would be appreciated!

[Bill Sheboy · Accepted solution]

Hi @Logan Harvey -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

One way to do that is allowing the rule to trigger itself to run again, using this option in the rule details at the top: "Check to allow other rule actions to trigger this rule..."

With that, if the Due Date changes in a subtask the rule triggers and updates the parent Task.  That change will trigger the rule again to update the parent Epic of the Task.

This setting is disabled by default to prevent rule errors and accidental looping, so only use it when you intentionally want this type of recursive behavior.

Also please note that as written, your rule may be missing some cases.  Consider how / if you want to handle them:

• What happens if someone manually changes the date in an Epic after it has been automatically updated?
• What happens if a Task changes to a different parent?
• What happens when a Task (or Subtask) is added as new with an already set Due Date?
• What happens when a Task (or Subtask) is deleted?
• etc.

Kind regards,
Bill

[Logan Harvey]

Thanks Bill, never noticed that checkbox before, that did the trick for a few other things I was working on too. Good ideas on the other situations this could be missing from, thanks again!