Jira Automation: Story Points in Parent are sometimes reset to 0
Hi,
I have a Jira Cloud Automation rule that should automatically calculate the sum of Story Points of all child issues and update the Parent issue.
The rule is configured as follows:
The rule works correctly in most cases. However, in some cases the Story Points value in the Parent issue is unexpectedly changed to 0.
I suspect that sometimes {{lookupIssues.Story Points.sum}} returns an empty value, and Jira Automation interprets it as 0.
I also tried using:
{
"fields": {
"Story Points": {{lookupIssues.Story Points.sum|0}}
}
}but I would like to understand the root cause.
Any advice would be appreciated.
3 answers
2 accepted
Hi @007989
The |0 default makes this worse, not better. When the lookup comes back empty, |0 turns the missing sum into a literal 0. The rule then writes that 0 to the parent.
The empty lookup is the search index lagging behind the trigger, as @Gor Greyan said. You can't fully prevent that, but you can stop it from causing damage. Add an Advanced compare condition between the Lookup and the Edit: {{lookupIssues.size}} greater than 0. When the index is behind, the rule now skips the update instead of writing 0. The next change on any child re-runs the rule and corrects the number. One edge case: if the last child is removed, the rule skips and the old value stays.
If the goal is mainly to see the rollup on the parent, you can also skip the stored field entirely. Disclaimer: I work for Plugio, the vendor of Plugio Panels. It adds a panel to the issue view that sums Story Points over direct children or the full hierarchy. The value is computed live when the issue is opened, so nothing can go stale or reset.
- Issue view
Following up on my earlier answer, @007989: if the stored total on the parent is mainly there so people can see the roll-up, the whole class of problem goes away when nothing is stored at all.
If you're open to solutions from the Atlassian Marketplace, the app my team and I work on, JXL for Jira, is a spreadsheet/table view for your Jira data with sum-ups that roll values up the hierarchy. Story Points totals appear on each parent row, computed from the children as the sheet loads, so there is no rule to misfire, no field to overwrite, and nothing that can be left at a stale 0.
The lookup cap doesn't apply here either, so parents with more than a hundred children still total correctly.
The trade-off is worth stating: because the value is computed in the sheet rather than written to Jira, it isn't available to JQL or to other gadgets. If you need the number queryable, keep the automation rule and use the guard.
Best regards,
Ivan
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