Filter Structure results to only show blocking issues on multiple levels

Question

Hi,

I have a structure that pulls in tickets via a "is child of" hierarchy relation. For simplicity say it looks like this

P1
|--- C1
|--- C2
|--- C3
P2
|--- C4

Where P1 is a ticket of parent type and C1,2,3 are tickets linked to it via "is child of".

Now I have tickets that are linked via a "is blocked by" relation. Either on the parent level directly or via the child tickets.

Extending the structure to show them is straightforward, so like

P1
|--- C1
      |--- B1
      |--- B2
|--- C2
|--- C3
|--- B3
P2
|--- C4

where B3 blocks P1 directly and B1,B2 block P1 via the relation over C1.

What I am now looking for is a way to filter this (via a S-JQL filter? could also do a new folder with generators in the structure..) to only show the "blocking path", i.e. to only show the parts of the structure that end in a blocking issue. 
So, the result should look like this

P1
|--- C1
      |--- B1
      |--- B2
|--- B3

Note that P2, C2 and C3 are not shown anymore as they do not "end" in blockers.

How can I achieve this? Including the blockers is straightforward. But filtering out the parts of the structure that do not contain the blockers is something I can't find my way around.

Yulia Barbash _ALM Works_ · Answer

Hello @Oliver Fochler

Thank you for the additional details!

That indeed presents an interesting challenge. I was able to recreate a scenario similar to what you described and found a solution that worked during my testing. We may need to make some adjustments to meet your specific criteria, but to start, could you please try the steps below?

To achieve your goal we need to combine 2 Transformation filters, one with JQL and another with S-JQL together into the Transformation group.

Step 1. Create Filter 1: Add >Filter > JQL > issue in structure("Customer Test", "parentorissues in [issuelinktype in ('is blocked by')]") and save.

Step 2. Create Filter 2: Add > Filter S-JQL > child_or_issue in [issueLinkType in ('blocks')] and save.

Step 3. Add two filters into the group in order: Filter 1 and Filter 2.

Let me know if that works for you.

Best regards
Yulia Barbash
www.almworks.com

Oliver Fochler · Answer

Hi @Yulia Barbash _ALM Works_

Thanks for the very quick respond! Unfortunately this does not yet full work for me. But for a side-effect that I wasn't really clear about in my post. 
Before I come to this, I had previously also tried a S-JQL query as filter generator with selforancestors of [issueFunction in hasLinks("blocks")] which works to the same extend.

What is "wrong" is the following - the approaches correctly show the blockers as per my simplified example above.

However, what this approach also shows is all tickets that have "blocks" relation to "some other places". What I really need is only the view where the "blocks" relation points upwards to the parent level (either directly or via the children level).

So, sticking to my example above, assume that in reality my C2 has a child C22 that has an additional "blocks" relation. But not pointing to C2 or P1 but to "some other place" (would be the same if C2 had a "blocks" relation in addition to "is child of")
The result of the proposed filter then is

P1
|--- C1
      |--- B1
      |--- B2
|--- C2
      |--- C22
|--- B3

Where C22 (and thus C2) is in because of some other block dependency. But I don't need that here...

Yulia Barbash _ALM Works_ · Answer

Hello @Oliver Fochler !

Yulia from ALM Works here.

You should be able to accomplish this by adding a JQL Filter generator: issueLinkType = "blocks", set to all levels.

Please let me know if this works for you.

Best regards
Yulia Barbash
www.almworks.com