Why does this automation to add up story points not work?

[deseymour]

I created an automation to add up the story points from tasks within an epic and put them in the epic story points field. It should add them up any time there is a change to any task's story points field. The log says it is doing it, but there is nothing being put into the story points field in the epic. I have attached screenshots of each element of the automation, the audit log, and the epic/tasks where I changed the story points to trigger the rule. Let me know what else might be needed to assist in figuring out why this doesn't work. Thanks in advance for any help.

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello  @deseymour 

First, I have found conditions imbedded within Triggers to be unreliable. You may want to remove that condition from the trigger and add it as a separate Condition component in your rule.

Second in your Edit action you are trying to set the Story Points in the Epic by referencing the {{lookupIssues}} smart value. That smart value is populated by using a Lookup Work Items action, which you have not done. Therefore the smart value has no value, and the Epic gets no value inserted into the Story Points field.

Prior to that step within the For branch, you need to add a Lookup Work Items action to look up the items that you want to include in the story point summation.

Do note that the Lookup Issue action is limited to returning only 100 issues.

https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/jira-automation-actions/#Lookup-issues

[deseymour]

Thank you! This fixed it!!

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @deseymour 

Yes, and...to the suggestions from @Trudy Claspill --

For the sum / synch of fields between parent and child work items, there are many ways the values can change...often requiring multiple rules (for just-in-time updates) or a single, scheduled trigger rule (for once-a-day updates).

To learn more, please see this article I wrote on the topic:

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

The comments to the article also note the recent feature from Atlassian for "formula fields", although that will not help for built-in fields such as Story Points (or Story point estimate for TMP).

Kind regards,
Bill