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How do I control the Story status when Story sub-tasks are completed and related question

George Carvill

Things are set up so that a Story can't be closed if it has open sub-tasks. Works fine. But when the last sub-task closes, the Story's status is changed to "Closed" instead of the status I want. Closed is an option, but not what should be the default.

How do I fix this?

The related question is this:

The Story and its sub-tasks are sitting happily in the "Open" status. When I drag a sub-task into the "In Progress" column, how can I cause the parent Story status to change to "In Progress" also?

Accepted answers

sclowes

Things are set up so that a Story can't be closed if it has open sub-tasks. Works fine. But when the last sub-task closes, the Story's status is changed to "Closed" instead of the status I want. Closed is an option, but not what should be the default.

GreenHopper simply tries to transition the parent issue to the same status as the status of the last sub task, if you do not want this behaviour just choose 'No' when GreenHopper asks if you'd like to automatically transition the parent issue then click on the parent issue and transition it to done by clicking the Cog, More Actions then the status that you want to be the final status for the parent.

The Story and its sub-tasks are sitting happily in the "Open" status. When I drag a sub-task into the "In Progress" column, how can I cause the parent Story status to change to "In Progress" also?

The only way to do this automatically is using the workflow ideas proposed by Tomi.

Thanks,
Shaun

All comments

Tomi

Hi George,

about your second question: have you tried using a "post action" in your workflow? You could trigger such a post action, i.e. one that transitions the parent issue of a subtask, when the subtask's status is changed from "open" to "in progress".

That way the story would move from" open" to "in progress" as soon as someone changes a subtask's status from "open" to "in progress". You might want to check on what happens if a story has more than one subtask an already has the status "in progress".

Cheers,

tomi

Tomi

Hi George,

if you open that particular workflow, just chose the transition you're looking for (the subtask's "open" -> "in progress") and click "Post Functions".

Above the listed post actions, there's a link to add a post action:

"Add a new post function to the unconditional result of the transition. "

and add a new post action. There are plenty of post action slistet, so maybe try a search (ctrl + f) and look for "Transition parent issue" and follow further instruction down the road.

Cheers,

tomi

George Carvill

That was my first thought. But when I look at the "Post Actions" I don't see any that deal with the parent Issue. Am I missing something?

Here is what I see:

George Carvill

Thanks, but...

You say, "There are plenty of post action slistet..."

But as you can see in the screen shot above, I only have 7 -- and there is no scroll bar or way I can see to find more.

Tomi

Hi George,

sorry, the screenshot was not shown when I wrote my answer. Have you tried looking for a way to add more post functions? Maybe your JIRA (tech-)admins could help you with this. Here's an article I found about adding post functions to JIRA:

http://www.j-tricks.com/1/post/2010/8/workflow-post-function.html

Cheers,

tomi

George Carvill

Humm... Thanks, but I'm not ready to start customizing at that level yet.

sclowes

Things are set up so that a Story can't be closed if it has open sub-tasks. Works fine. But when the last sub-task closes, the Story's status is changed to "Closed" instead of the status I want. Closed is an option, but not what should be the default.

The Story and its sub-tasks are sitting happily in the "Open" status. When I drag a sub-task into the "In Progress" column, how can I cause the parent Story status to change to "In Progress" also?

The only way to do this automatically is using the workflow ideas proposed by Tomi.

Thanks,
Shaun

George Carvill

GreenHopper simply tries to transition the parent issue to the same status as the status of the last sub task,

Ah, the SAME STATUS. I will have to try altering some statuses to see if this will do what I am after.

George Carvill

... and the winner is... Shaun!

When I made the final sub-task status match the status I wanted for the parent story (and some other changes) it worked.

The other changes I had to make were...

1. Remove the transition from the location where the parent might be to Closed, since JIRA really wanted to use that transition.

2. Added a transition from all the places where the story "might" be to the matching status step so it had a way to get there.

Deborah Baron

Can we set the "Post function" so it is the default for all subtasks and the Parent?

Thanks - Deb

laurence bascle

anybody know if there is a ticket on Atlassian's roadmap to vote for, to enable workflow postcondition customisation? i am also not using the simplified Greenhopper workflow but a JIRA one, thanks

adrian_bukowski

There is a plugin which extends list of available post actions in transitions - JIRA Misc Workflow Extension.

Doron Gill1

Great discussion, but at the end of the day, why would one need to bend over backwards to resolve what is, in essence, a bug? All the more so when adding a Post function, or messing around in any other way, with the predefined DO-NOT-TOUCH simplified workflow, is frowned upon

When one moves a subtask to "In Progress" it is very clear that this Story is now In Progress and looking at the Work Board only amplifies this. Why Jira Agile will refuse to mark it as such in the Sprint Report is anybody's guess. IMHO, this needs to be opened as a bug, and our wonderul vendor needs to fix it.

George Carvill

Doron,

I don't understand your concern. When I move the first subtask to In Progress, the parent story moves to In Progress. No problem.

Doron Gill1

Thanks for promptly addressing.

So... first... to make sure there is no misunderstanding, I did NOT add the POST transition. As I stated I would like to refrain from messing around with the Simplified Workflow.

And so... at least on my jira, when moving a subtask into In Progress, the Story still stays To Do.

Doug Varn1

George, it sounds like you're trying to do what I am. When all story sub-tasks are Done (closed), transition the story to something else (ie Ready for QA). I read all the comments, but not clear you got it working. Did you and how if so?

Arun Mathew Tho

Is there a way to de-link the parent (story) status from the status of the sub-tasks

Rob Parkin2

I know it's an old question, but I've been having the same problem.

It appears, that by default, JIRA sets the Swimlanes based on Stories

If you want to see your Stories in the right position in the Columns (with respect to status) then set Board/Configure/Swimlanes to "No Swimlanes"

Kelly Morales

Any recent changes here? I'm attempting to do something similar (move all stories to 'Done' and have the option to select UAT for the parent status instead of Done) using our Kanban board.

Our Scrum board setting allows you to set multiple status' under the Done column, which then prompts the user to select one of the Done status (UAT, QA or Done) options when moving all sub-tasks to Done.

So the 'solution' would seem to have multiple status options within the Kanban board to be considered a 'Done' state. I've updated our workflow scheme to indicate a few of these statuses to be Done but this does not resolve the issue.

Ernesto Di Luccia

This will help me also//!!!

Claire Buckley

George - it doesn't on my board. I move a subtask to In Progress and the parent story stays in To Do so I have to go through and manually update the parent story so we can see what work is being started.

chris.antreasian

I am having the same issue. All subtasks can be in Done state when the parent story remains in To Do. I want them to by synced

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