Jira Automation: Auto assigning the same Parent as the source work item to cloned work items

[Stephen Anderson]

Hi Jira Community,

I've been struggling to establish an automated rule that, by default, sets the parent of a cloned ticket to the same parent as the source ticket being cloned. 

Here's where I've got to so far but any help/guidance would be appreciated.

Cheers!

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Stephen Anderson -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

First thing: what problem are you solving by cloning?  That is, "why do this?"  Knowing that may help the community offer better suggestions.

Next, what is not working as you expected?  What does the audit log show when the rule runs?

Finally, for the rule you show...

• In the clone action, are you setting the parent to the "Current Work Item", which is the one the rule branches to?
• Please note the Work Item Created action has known racetrack timing problems.  Thus, the rule can start before all of the data is available for use...potentially leading to errors and unexpected rule behavior.  The mitigation for that is to always add a Re-fetch Work Item Data action immediately after the Work Item Created trigger.

Kind regards,
Bill

[Stephen Anderson]

Hi @Bill Sheboy, thanks for the warm welcome and Happy Friday!

We want to reduce the amount of manual tweaking to tickets required when cloning, especially in Sprint planning, when cloning tickets that are spilling over. It's not a major time saving, but would make life easier.

In terms of what isn't working as expected, anytime a ticket is cloned - the parent mapping of the original ticket isn't replicated in the cloned ticket. The audit log shows it's running successfully which suggests I haven't got the logic correct. 

Thanks for the guidance on re-fetch, I've added this in.

Here's a view of the end action - it appears to be set to the work item but it's not unlikely I've got this wrong!

Thanks again for your help.

[Bill Sheboy]

Thanks for that information, @Stephen Anderson 

Do you want to Clone the work item or edit a different one, as you now appear to be showing a different rule with different branching?

If you are branching to the Parent, select that field in the Clone action and then select "Work Item" for the value as it will refer to the branched-to item.

FYI -- When using the dropdown field selection in a Clone or Edit Work Item action, the same field cannot also be used in the "Additional fields".  Please clear out that content.

[Marc -Devoteam-]

Hi @Stephen Anderson 

Welcome to the community.

When will a cloned ticket be created, is this on a specific action in the source issue?

As based on the default Clone action if the original issue has a parent the cloned item will be linked to that parent.

So how do you clone an issue?

[Stephen Anderson]

Hi @Marc -Devoteam- , thanks for the warm welcome and Happy Friday!

We primarily clone tickets manually when creating similar requests (to piggyback existing details) or handling spillover during Sprint Planning. 

It's interesting to hear you say the default Clone action should link back to the original issues parent. This isn't happening in our current set-up - anytime a ticket is cloned, by default, the parent of the new ticket is set as blank.

Thanks again for your help.