Critical Limitation: Jira Rovo fails to navigate Cross-Project Hierarchies and Nested JQL (Initiativ

[sidnei_barcelos]

I am experiencing a significant blocker with Jira Rovo when generating reports that require cross-project hierarchical analysis. Our structure is defined in Jira Plans: Initiatives (EN Project) -> Epics (Multiple Projects) -> Tasks (Multiple Projects).

The issue is twofold:

1. Context Blindness: When Rovo searches for children of an Initiative, it often fails to "see" Epics or Tasks that reside in different Jira projects ( from EN to AB20 or ABC), even though they are correctly linked in the Parent field.

2. JQL Nesting Failure: Rovo struggles to resolve nested JQL functions like childIssuesOf(childIssuesOf(...)). It frequently returns empty results or "syntax errors" when the logic requires jumping two levels down in the hierarchy across multiple boards.

This prevents the Agent from automating weekly metrics, as it cannot consolidate the delivery status of tasks that are technically disconnected from the Initiative's project.

The Prompt used (for reference):

"You are a Jira metrics analyst. Generate the 'Weekly Refactoring Report'.

Hierarchy: Initiative (EN project) → Epic (various projects) → Task (various projects).

Logic required:

1. Identify all Epics where parent is an Initiative in project = EN.

2. For those Epics, identify all Tasks completed in the last 7 days, regardless of the Task's project.

3. Group the completed Tasks by their respective Epic and Initiative.

JQL attempted by the agent: issuekey in childIssuesOf("project = EN AND issuetype = Iniciativa") and subsequent nested calls.

Current Result: The agent returns 0 results or claims it cannot find the issues, despite them being visible in Jira Plans and standard JQL searches."

[Dr Valeri Colon _Connect Centric_]

@sidnei_barcelos Welcome to the community. I think the main blocker here is that Rovo doesn’t reliably handle recursive cross-project hierarchy queries or nested JQL the way Plans/Jira do. So even a clearer prompt may still fail. This looks more like a current Rovo limitation than just prompt structure.

[Rebekka Heilmann (viadee)]

Hi @sidnei_barcelos - welcome to the Community,

For 1, I'd make it more explicit in the prompt. that Epic and Tasks may be in different projects than the initiative. Maybe Rovo doesn't correctly interpret the brackets in your hierarchy description.

For 2: "childIssuesOf" is not a native JQL function so probably not fully supported by Rovo. Does Rovo build JQLs with that function on the go or are you providing filters with that function?

You already have the 3 steps - do you see Rovo acting in 3 steps already? If not, try to add something like "go through these steps one by one, using the results from the previous steps as input for your next step.