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Jira Automation: How to start and close Epic automatically depending on contained issue transitions?

Ingo Mohr

Hi all,

I would like to start and close my Epics automatically by working on the epics's issues alone.

i.e.

* when I start the first of its issues, the Epic should be transitioned to a certain status in its workflow

* when I close the last of its issues, the Epic should be closed, too.

How can I do this w/ Jira automation?

Accepted answers

All comments

Mikael Sandberg

Your automation should look something like this:

Screen Shot 2021-11-05 at 4.01.16 PM.png

Mikael Sandberg

And if you look in the library you will find an automation that will close the epic once all stories are done.

Bill Sheboy

Hi @Ingo Mohr

Yes, you could do this for specific status values or generically (with statusCategory). I encourage you to experiment and try both ways to learn about automation rules.

For example as generically, ignoring issue status:

trigger: issue transitioned (status values do not matter)
condition: issue type is Story, Task, or Bug
related issues condition: epic exists
if/else...
- advanced compare condition: statusCategory is "in progress"
- branch: on epic parent
  - condition: epic is not in progress
  - action: transition it to your in progress status
else
- advanced compare condition: statusCategory is "done"
- action: lookup issues with JQL with the same parent that are not done
- advanced compare condition: {{lookupIssues.size|0}} equals 0 (so, everything is done)
- branch: on epic parent
  - condition: epic is not already done
  - action: transition it to your done status

Kind regards,
Bill

Daniel Turczanski - JQL Search Extensions

Hi @Ingo Mohr ,

If you have our JQL Search Extensions, you can create a scheduled daily or hourly rule to find the epics that need to be transitioned:

type=Epic AND statusCategory="To Do" AND (issuesInEpicToDoCount>0 OR issuesInEpicInProgressCount>0)

You can find more examples in the documentation.

Thanks!

Ingo Mohr

Thank you @Daniel Turczanski for suggesting your plug-in. It's not my Jira instance, however. But still: good to know

Ingo Mohr

Thanks @Bill Sheboy

I had to fiddle around a little bit - but I could get the rule up and running.

Ingo Mohr

Thanks @Mikael Sandberg !

This worked - and I think this helps me get going too for other rules.

### Suggestion

However, while I was editing the rule, I asked myself why there isn't a feature to specify rules as a script - maybe directly with a Bitbucket Repo link - so that I can maintain rules in Bitbucket (with tags) and then refer to the tag of a rule script in Bitbucket...