How do I CSV import Tasks as child links of an existing Story?

[Alex Hodgkiss]

Howdy all,

Basically, in a project I have Epics which contain Stories, and I'm trying to have Tasks which are children of the Stories. Then when you link at an example Story it will show under Issue Links being a "parent of" one or more Tasks. Works perfectly fine when made inside or Jira.

Right now I already have the Epics and Stories made. When I try to import several Tasks however I cannot get them to be children of the various Stories if imported via CSV.

When I try using Parent ID it doesn't work because the Tasks are not Sub-Tasks. I've used Link "Child" as well as Link "Parent" using the key and Issue IDs of the Stories, but again, they cannot seem to find the existing Story and connect.

Has anyone experienced something similar and know how to import a parent/child relationship between tasks that isn't the traditional Epic or Sub-Task variety?

[John Funk · Accepted solution]

Hi Alex - Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

What you are describing is not a true parent/child relationship in Jira - they are simply linked issues. You cannot make a task a child of a story as they are on the same level. 

However, if you are wanting to link them on the create, you should be to use the Link field as you describe. I am assuming you have the Key for the linked issue in the CSV file in the column you are using for the Link "Child" (or "Parent" field? 

And when you say it can't find it, is there an error? Or what does it do? 

[Alex Hodgkiss]

Hi John,

Funny enough, an hour after posting I finally made it work again via trial and error.

I ended up using Link "Child" with the issue Key, and it managed to work for some reason. Prior to this, any attempts were giving my a validation error because the Task wasn't a Sub-Task, or it would say it couldn't find the key I was trying to Link with.

Not sure what changed, but this is now working consistently and just came back to post that.