How can I validate that an activity has a subtask?

[Diego Arturo Bustos Aponte]

I have an issue type called "story", but I want to validate that there is at least one subtask called "acceptance criteria." How do I create this check in the workflow?

[Thiago Wenceslau -Appfire-]

Hi @Diego Arturo Bustos Aponte
I’m Thiago, a support engineer at Appfire.

If you are considering third-party apps, you could easily validate this using JMWE(Jira Misc Workflow Extensions), here’s an example:



This workflow will restrict all issues that is no parent of a Sub-task, then, by checking the Additional condition, we can use the following Jira Expression:

linkedIssue.summary == "acceptance criteria"

This will add a new criteria which only will allow Issues that have a Sub-task’s summary named “acceptance criteria”, thus meeting your desired outcome.

Please contact our support if you have any other questions about this.

Best regards, Appfire support team.

[Olga Cheban _TitanApps_]

hi @Diego Arturo Bustos Aponte !

If you are open to using third-party tools, I can recommend an alternative option.

If each Story must contain Acceptance Criteria, you can approach this a bit differently. Instead of verifying if a Story includes a subtask, you can organize your Acceptance Criteria as a checklist and automatically add it to every Story. You can easily do this with the help of our solution, Smart Checklist for Jira.

Here's what it looks like. You can add the Acceptance Criteria based on the work type (Story) or according to any other criteria. For the latter option, switch to the Advanced settings. This is all done within Smart Checklist, so you don't need to set up Jira automation rules for this.



As for the validation part, this can also be handled with Smart Checklist. You can mark the most essential criteria (or all of them) as Mandatory Items and add completion validation. As a result, the request can be moved to Done only when all the mandatory steps are completed. The mandatory steps will be marked with a red asterisk. 

I hope this helps!
Please let me know if you have any questions

[Ollie Guan]

Hi @Diego Arturo Bustos Aponte ,

If you want to stay fully native (no marketplace apps / scripts), a practical way is to use Jira Automation to simulate a validator.

You can configure a rule so that:

• When a Story is transitioned to Done:

  • If it has at least one sub-task, the transition succeeds and nothing special happens.

  • If it does not have any sub-tasks, the Automation rule:

    • Automatically moves the Story back to a previous status (for example, In Progress), and

    • Adds a comment explaining that the Story can’t be completed until it has at least one sub-task.

From the user’s point of view, it feels very similar to a “hard” validator: they try to move the issue to Done, and it immediately “bounces” back with a clear message.

Tip: you can use Rovo to help you build this

If you have Rovo available in your Jira Cloud instance, you can also ask Rovo directly (e.g. “Create an automation rule that prevents Stories from staying in Done if they have no subtasks”) and let it guide you through generating or adjusting the exact rule configuration for your project.

[Diego Arturo Bustos Aponte]

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