Novice question: how to roll up time tracking in Epic from children's children

[Andrew Bowie]

In our Jira cloud implementation, we use the following hierarchy of work:

Epic -> Task -> Sub-task 

The time tracking in these tasks is calculated as follows:

Sub-task = (Sum of time logged within Sub-task)

Task = (Sum of time logged within Task) + (Sum of time logged within Sub-task)

Epic = (Sum of time logged within Epic) + (Sum of time logged within Task) excluding (sum of time logged within Sub-Task)

How do we include the time from a child's children to the Epic?

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @Andrew Bowie 

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

Atlassian does not do that natively but you could create customizations to do that. One such method would be Automation Rules 

There are examples of such rules in the Community. You can find them doing an internet search for "Jira Cloud automation roll up time tracking to epic"

You may also want to review this Automation Concepts article from @Bill Sheboy 

https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Automation-articles/Automation-concepts-Sum-or-Synch-Fields-with-Parent-and-Child/ba-p/3162890

[Trudy Claspill]

Additionally, if your organization is new to Jira you may want to take advantage of the free, on-demand training available from the Learning link at the top of the community pages. You can find training for a variety of skill levels, for general usage, administration, and diving into specific topics like Automations.

[Rahul_RVS]

Hi @Andrew Bowie 

If you are open to try out a mktplace solution to sum up the time tracking data, you can have a look at our app,

Issue Hierarchy

The app allows you to view your Issue Hierarchy  in a tree view. In the hierarchy view you can view the % progress of your child issues as well. The app sums up the time spent / story points at each parent level. You can also group and filter the data as per the use case.. Do give it a try.

Disclaimer : I am one of the app team member

[Fatma Uzundemir from The Starware]

Hi  @Andrew Bowie  👋

Jira does not natively roll up time tracking data from Sub-tasks or Stories directly into the Epic's "Time Tracking" field automatically. You can achieve a basic version of this using Jira Automation. You would need to create a rule that triggers whenever "Time Spent" is updated on a child issue, which then performs an "Edit Issue" action on the Parent (Epic) to update a custom field. However, this can be complex to maintain, especially if you have deep hierarchies or want to see real-time updates without page refreshes.

🌱 If you are looking for a more robust and "set-and-forget" solution, I'd recommend taking a look at Sum Up Field.

Sum Up Field is designed specifically to solve this hierarchy gap. It doesn't just look at one level; it calculates data from the deepest child issue (Sub-tasks) all the way up to the top-level Parent, regardless of how many levels your hierarchy has.

Looking at the example you provided above, the Sum-up Field doesn't just consider the bottom child, it considers all the children. As seen in the image, the calculations work exactly as you expect.

What makes it different:

• ⚡ Beyond Summation: You aren't limited to just "Sum." You can choose from 5 calculation methods: Sum, Max, Min, Average, and Count.
• 🎯 Versatile Metrics: It works for any numeric field—whether you want to track  Time Spent, Peak Budget Risks, or Story Points.

 

🍀 To learn more, feel free to contact me or explore the application through the Atlassian Marketplace link I’ve provided.

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Disclaimer: I work for the vendor who developed this application.