How to delete all sub-tasks for an issue via automation?

[Randy O_Neal]

Hi all.  I have an automation for bugs.  By agreement within our Product team, if someone prioritizes a bug as a P4 (our lowest priority), we are currently transitioning the bug to Accepted and setting the resolution to WontFix.  The idea is that we're not going to expend any resources on such a low priority issue, but we do want to retain the record so that if anyone searches Jira, they will still be able to find the bug and take notice we did not fix anything; rather, we simply closed it.

The automation rule is easy enough:

What I'd like to do is add an additional action within the scope of the "Then: Transition" action.  I would like to delete all associated sub-tasks.  I've found several variants of this out here in the Community forums, but I haven't found an exact match for what I'm needing to do.  Can someone lend a helping hand?

[Matteo Vecchiato · Accepted solution]

Hi @Randy O_Neal 

Thank you for your question. This automation should work:

I hope it helps

[Randy O_Neal]

Matteo, that worked perfectly!  Thank you so much!!

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Randy O_Neal 

If the work item is valuable enough to keep when transitioning and setting the Resolution to "Won't Fix", why delete the Subtasks...as that is not reversible?  What content do they contain?  Perhaps also transitioning them would prevent the loss of information.

Kind regards,
Bill

[Randy O_Neal]

Good question, @Bill Sheboy .  Our method of operations generally follows this order:

1. Someone creates a bug
2. During the bug creation, we have a set of template tasks which are created
3. Before any actions are taken on the bug, the bug must be both prioritized and groomed
   1. The Product Owner prioritizes the bugs prior to being groomed by the team
   2. Once prioritized, the team will groom the work before being moved to Ready.

Since the prioritization occurs before the team begins any work on the bug, there are only template tasks associated to the bug.  Even if the bug makes it to the grooming process before it is set to a P4 priority, no work has been performed by the team, so the only sub-tasks are still limited to template tasks.  Obviously, someone can change the priority at any point in time, but this is rare once the team has groomed the bug.

This may not be the case for other teams or companies, so your mileage may vary... but it works perfectly for us.  Hope this answers your question.