How can we bulk link issues to another issue

[Kimberlea Turner]

Hi,

In the past I am certain there were ways of bulk linking issues to another issue simply by pasting a list of issue keys into a field and selecting the relationship from a dropdown menu, allowing it to link them all in one go. Since a couple of updates in Jira we don't seem to be able to do that anymore, and going via issue search result to the "Bulk change all x issues" menu option to bulk edit issues shows linking as an unavailable option.

We have a lot of staff doing a lot of QA checks and we are finding that whenever someone has forgotten to start the test session, or the capture extension isn't working properly, or the test session failed, or multiple other reasons something didn't quite go right, we need to attach the content edit issues we raise to the QA task, and we are now having to do that one by one manually in the QA task itself, a painful process when we can have a hundred issues raised in any QA. 

Are we missing something, is there some secret way of linking a lot of issues? 

If there isn't some secret way of linking a lot of issues, could you please create some easy not-secret way of linking a lot of issues? Like I said, we used to have that ability, it was very useful, and we would like it back. 

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Kimberlea Turner 

It is true that it is not possible to enter, for example, a comma or space separated list of issue keys and get one issue linked to all of those issues in a single action. That was possible with Jira Server/Data Center, but not with Jira Cloud. There is an open change request to which you can add your vote:

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSWCLOUD-26129

You could potentially create an Automation rule that is manually triggered where the user would be prompted to enter the link type and a string of issue keys. Then the automation would iterate through the string of issue keys and attempt to link the issues in the list to the issue from which the Automation was triggered.

[Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira]

Hi @Kimberlea Turner

if you're open to solutions from the Atlassian Marketplace, you may want to have a look at the app that my team and I are working on, JXL for Jira.

JXL is a full-fledged spreadsheet/table view for your issues that allows viewing, inline-editing, sorting, and filtering by all your issue fields - including your issues' issue links - much like you’d do in e.g. Excel or Google Sheets. You can also easily bulk edit your issue fields using copy/paste, e.g. like so:

You can update any number of issues and issue fields in one action, so you should be done with your work in no time! I should also add that JXL can do much more than the above: From support for configurable issue hierarchies, to issue grouping by any issue field(s), sum-ups, or conditional formatting.

Any questions just let me know,

Best,

Hannes

[Armitha Reddy Toorpu Ceema]

Hi @Kimberlea Turner 

If my understanding is correct, to link bulk issues to other issues, you can write a Groovy script using the Scriptrunner plugin to automate the linking of issues.

Regards,

Armitha.