Help with bulk edits on boards with several automations

[Gary]

Hi All,

I'm looking for a bit of help regarding potential bulk edits on a jira kanban board that has several automations.

A bit of context about this, I created a kanban board where an epic drives the creation of a task, then subsequently the transition of that task to DONE then drives the creation of another task and so on. I created this, as a process I am in charge of has to be completed in a certain order, with some tasks being able to be completed simultaneously. Please see my attached workflow to show which tasks drive the creation of other tasks (denoted by the grey arrows).

To manage the due dates of the tasks I created a custom field called baseline due date. This is when the EPIC (panel) is due for completion (All tasks shown in workflow need to be completed before the EPIC is deemed complete).

The custom field is copied from the epic to task it creates and is given a minusWeeks value. That task is then the trigger issue for the next task and this copies the baseline date from that and so on. (see attached screenshot).

If I were to bulk edit the epic dates would this change all dates of linked tasks (even though the epic isn't the direct parent of every task) or would I have to edit all dates?

Additionally, I am looking to add in another task which would be created when 'SIN & SMF Drawing Creation' task is complete. If I add this task creation in as another automation. Is there a way of getting jira to create this task for epics which are already past the SIN stage on the workflow. I need this task created and backdated for epics which are already past this stage and nearly complete. Could this be solved by a bulk edit?

Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Gary

[Walter Buggenhout · Accepted solution]

Hi @Gary,

You are describing a - potentially very complex - scenario here. As long as it is 100% stable and repetitive, it might work. I am always a bit cautious when I see automation with this level of detail as it may cause more work for your team than it actually helps, if it leads to cases where many of the automatically generated tasks and dates need to be adjusted manually afterwards.

Having said that: what is possible and what isn't very much depends on how your automation rule(s) are being triggered. From your description, it seems as if tasks are being created and dates are being set when other issues get created or transition into a different status.

If you want to use automation to propel your epic's due dates to its child issues, you must have a rule that is being triggered by an issue updated event, looking at the baseline due date. If your automation is not listening for that event, it won't fire and it won't update child issues accordingly.

I am not always certain if bulk changes trigger the usual events that are being sent out if individual issues are updated. But it should be quite easy to validate that by triggering a bulk update on e.g. 1 or 2 issues. That should tell you if these trigger your automation rules.

Keep in mind that this will lead to all sorts of complex corner cases you may need to consider. What will you do e.g. with child issues that were already completed or are already in progress? ...

You are also not mentioning what hosting type or Jira plan you are on. It is also worth mentioning that automation has execution limits. Scenarios like the one you are describing may consume large numbers of rule executions, so it will be quite important to monitor if this would fit in your plan's execution limits.

Hope this helps!

[Gary]

Hi Walter,

Thanks a lot for your help. I'm fairly new to jira so trying to pick up things as I go along.

So potentially, I write an automation to update all linked issues when baseline due date is edited, but this may not work if I bulk edit? Does the fact the the due date for a task comes from the previous task complicate matters (albeit copied from the original epic)? So, if I write an automation on update of the epic to change dates accordingly, then it might only change the date of first task in line with the epic (in this case 'build tree / ref edge creation)? So I may have to write several automation for each link between each task to update when the date is changed?

I'd still like the tasks in progress or completed to be updated if the epic dates are updated. This leads me onto another question. I am trying to create an EazyBI report on the status of each task within the epic. So I am having more custom fields set-up that will be automatically populate with the name of the task when the task is created. This will allow me to create columns on the EazyBI report from these custom field. However, would bulk edit be able to deal with populating these new custom fields for epics that have already created tasks without this automation or custom field being active?

With regards to the hosting I am unsure about the plan my business is on. I only have certain permissions when it comes to jira. If I want a new project created I need to ask the IT department, similarly they are responsible for the creation of the workflows and I have to request them. So there is a lot about jira I don't have involvement in.

Cheers,

Gary