In Automations, how do I automatically create stories to link to Epic when the Epic is created?

[Daniel McLean]

My current company-managed Jira environment doesn't allow me to create stories without also defining the summary in UI (can't do it all in JSON). Since the definitions for the new issue are not all in JSON, the issue description is being overwritten by the JSON itself.

[Felipe Justino]

You can achieve this using Automation for Jira without relying entirely on JSON (which is usually what causes the issue of overwriting the description or summary fields).

✅ How to configure it
Use the Issue Created trigger.

Add a condition: Issue Type = Epic.

Then add a Create Issue action to generate the Stories.

The key point is: avoid using the “More options → JSON” field unless absolutely necessary.
When you use partial JSON, Jira treats only the fields you provide as valid and ends up overwriting the others, which is why your Description is being lost.

🔗 How to link the Story to the Epic
Inside the Create Issue action, fill in the fields normally:

Issue Type: Story

Summary: whatever summary you need

Description: write your text here as well (do not leave it empty)

Parent (or Epic Link, depending on your instance): {{triggerIssue.key}}

This way, you can automatically create as many Stories as you need, all properly linked to the Epic, without losing the Description field and without having to define every field through JSON.

[John Funk]

Hi Daniel,

Do you have the Automation for Jira app? That would be the easiest solution.