Automation to complete epics when all linked tickets are complete

Question

I'm trying to see if there is a way to mark epics as complete once all issues that form part of it are complete. We find that folk focus on the epic's tasks, and forget to return to the epic to mark it as complete. This is a real problem if the tasks are assigned to multiple individuals or teams.

I've looked at automation, but I couldn't see anything there that would do it. Having said that, I'm not an automation expert.

It would help save us time if we could come up with a solution, as I'm sure we're not the only people to come up against this. Many thanks.

Colum McAndrew · Answer

Excellent. Thank you so much @Bill Sheboy

Bill Sheboy · Answer

Hi @Colum McAndrew

Sorry, I was confusing your post with a similar one.  I thought you had already figured out the child-triggered part...and so I was noting the last part about updating the epic itself.

For your whole solution, could use a couple of approaches:

* When ever an issue transitions to "done", find out if it has a epic parent (or grand-parent), then work forwards to scan all children/grandchildren.  This can be done using the related issues conditions and branching structures.
* Use a scheduled rule which checks the epics periodically, walking their entire "tree" for the check

The first technique would move the epic to done as soon as possible, but is susceptible to closing too early if an child was moved in error.

Either approach can be done using one rule, or two rules to reduce the complexity.  From the template library, here is an example rule for the story/task --> sub-task layer:

https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/automation-template-library/rules#/rule/140671

Here is the blog post originally written to explain that rule: https://blog.codebarrel.io/synchronize-parent-and-sub-task-issues-with-automation-for-jira-bdcca6c9d453

The same idea can be used as a starting point to work from story/task to their "siblings", and then update the epic.

Here is another post from one of the automation engine developers, explaining variations closer to what you asked:

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Automation-questions/How-do-I-automatically-trigger-a-status-change-on-a-parent-issue/qaq-p/273658

Colum McAndrew · Answer

Many thanks for the response @Bill Sheboy but maybe I'm missing something. We don't want to have to change the status of the epic manually at all. What I'm after is that the epic is automatically set to our done status when all the tickets linked to it are marked as done. Correct me if I'm wrong, but your automation seems to suggest something different.