Seeking Advice on Managing High-Volume, Recurring Tasks in Jira

[Sophie Bruxner-Randall]

Hi Atlassian Community!

I’m looking for guidance on the best way to manage a high volume of repeatable tasks within Jira.

Our team manages between 60-90 newsletters every week, each of which moves through a defined workflow with multiple subtasks, e.g. drafted, reviewed, approved, scheduled, etc. 

These steps need to be repeated every week for each newsletter, and we’re also handling a set of ad hoc tasks alongside these routine workflows.

In the past, we’ve used Kanban boards, but with the sheer volume of issues and subtasks, it has become difficult to manage everything effectively. We had to revert to using an Excel template where we copy and paste tasks each week. However, this solution is not ideal due to its manual nature, and things can easily be missed.

What I’m looking for is:

1. A better approach to handling large volumes of recurring tasks and subtasks in Jira.
2. Guidance on whether automated duplication of task templates (weekly or custom recurrences) is a viable solution in our case.
3. Advice on whether there are specific Jira features or configurations (e.g., workflows, task automation, or custom fields) that could make managing this high volume more streamlined.
4. Thoughts on how to handle a mix of recurring and ad hoc tasks without the board becoming overwhelming.

Any recommendations, workflows, or tool integrations that could simplify this process would be greatly appreciated. We’re open to reconfiguring our boards, using different views, or setting up automations—whatever makes this more efficient for our team.

Thanks in advance for your help!

[Luka Hummel - codefortynine]

Hi @Sophie Bruxner-Randall and welcome to the community!

To efficiently manage your high volume of recurring tasks in Jira, I'd recommend using our app Deep Clone for Jira. Deep Clone allows you, combined with Jira Automation, to automate the duplication of tasks, including subtasks, reducing the need for manual handling each week.

[Rik de Valk]

Hi @Sophie Bruxner-Randall , 

Some thoughts that come to mind: 

A better approach to handling large volumes of recurring tasks and subtasks

When working with a large volume of tasks, break things up in smaller bits and apply a structure.

• If your team consists of more than 8 people, maybe split up your team in smaller teams (🍕 look-up Jeff Bezos 2 pizza rule). 
• Maybe the 60-90 newsletters can be grouped in topics / platform. Use Components to define these and assign your issues to these Components. This doesn't reduce the volume, but it creates easier insight
• If you currently use sub-tasks for Draft, Review, Approval, Scheduled and all news letters require these same stages, it is probably better to create a Workflow specially crafted for the news-letters. This worklfow will have statuses Draft, Review et cetera. Next you can align the columns of your Kanban board to these statuses. This means each News letter task is only 1 card (issue), and simply moves from column Draft to column Review and so on... This saves you a lot of issues (no need for sub-tasks). Note: having a dedicated workflow, means you'll be best of also having a specific Issue type for Newsletters. 

Automated replication

As @Nikola Perisic and @Dick already mentioned, you can create an Automation Rule to automatically generate all 60 - 90 news letter tasks. 

Thoughts on how to handle a mix of recurring and ad hoc tasks

The ad-hoc work probably doesn't follow the same lifecycle as the Nesletter work. So if you've created a Newsletter issue type (as I suggested above, make sure the other work do not use this issue type. But instead use Task issue type for the ad-hoc work. 

You can create a separate swimlane on your kanban for these Tasks. Or as @Nikola Perisic  suggested, even create a separate Kanban board for these. 

Have a nice day! 

Rik 

[John Funk]

Hi Sophie - Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

You might see if this article is helpful for you:

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-articles/Creating-a-Flexible-Recurring-Task-Issue/ba-p/2040862

[Dick]

Hi @Sophie Bruxner-Randall , welcome to the community!

You can use automation to set-up the issues that belong to a single newsletter.

Either triggering it from the menu, or when i.e. an epic is created.  

Stick to Kanban, maybe add necessary statuses / columns in your board to really capture the workflow of your team.

If you need to handle mixed tasks, you need a way to let Jira filter them for you for clarity on your board. You can use every field to filter, so it's up to you which one you choose. My personal preference would be to use a component for this, as components manifest themselves as a pulldown menu during issue creation (easy to fill-in without mistakes).

I hope this helps you managing your newsletters,

Dick

[Nikola Perisic]

Welcome to the community @Sophie Bruxner-Randall 

One way to tackle the recurring tasks is to create an automation rule that will based on the set schedule will create new tasks.

• Trigger - Scheduled - you select the start and the end date of the task
• Action - create new - here you would choose which issue type is this (from what I saw these are the subtasks)

To handle the mix of recurring and ad hoc tasks, I would suggest to create a separate board. One board will be for your ad hoc tasks and the other board will be for your recurring tasks. That way you will limit the number of tasks without cluttering your board.