Where to turn on the auto scheduling

[Jessica Hu]

Why I can't find the location of auto-schedule in my Jira? I want a task's start date to move automatically when it is blocked by a predecessor task, 

[Trudy P Claspill]

Hello @Jessica Hu 

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

That is not a native feature of a Standard subscription of Jira.

In the Premium subscription there is an "auto-schedule" feature but is only within the Plans (aka Advanced Roadmaps) feature and it doesn't operate in the way you describe.

If you want dates to be updated automatically you need either a third party app from the Marketplace or you develop your own work around.

I wrote an article about using Automation Rules (now Flows) for a work around. You can find that article here.

Updating dependent task's dates when predecessor task date changes 

[Davit Mkrtchyan - Be On Time]

Hi Jessica @Jessica Hu  -

Trudy is right, I will just add the part that usually bites people a few months in.

The reason the setting does not exist is architectural. What you want is a
scheduling engine: predecessor moves, successor recalculates. What Jira gives you
is link types. "Blocks / is blocked by" is a semantic label for humans and JQL - it
carries no scheduling meaning. There is no duration behind it, no lag, no
finish-to-start constraint. So there is nothing for Jira to recalculate. It is not
hidden somewhere in settings, it was never built into Jira Software.

The Automation/Flows workaround Trudy linked is the right first step for a simple
chain. Worth knowing where it stops holding, so it does not surprise you later:

- working calendar: a rule that adds days to a date will happily land a start date
on a Saturday or in the middle of someone's PTO, unless you code the calendar
yourself
- duration: pushing a start date does not preserve the length of the task, so the
finish has to move too, and then everything downstream of it
- multiple predecessors: a task blocked by three tasks must start after the LATEST
of them finishes. Per-link rules tend to react to whichever one moved last
- cascades: a change three levels up should ripple all the way down, which means
rules triggering rules, and Jira's loop protection will stop the chain before your
plan does

None of that means do not try it. It means you are hand-building a scheduler out of
automation rules, and somewhere past 20-30 linked tasks the maintenance becomes its
own project.

Disclosure so you can weigh this properly: I work with Be on Time, an Atlassian
Marketplace partner. We build MSP Planner for Jira, which exists for exactly this
gap - real FS/SS/FF/SF dependencies with lag, task durations, working calendars,
critical path, writing dates back to Jira issues. There are several Gantt/scheduling
apps in this category on the Marketplace, ours is one of them.

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/3162894022/msp-planner-for-jira

If your chains are short, honestly - start with Trudy's Flows approach. It is free.