Given a list of Epics (via JQL Query) how can I iterate over the children of each Epic?

Gregory Hill

I have a situation where I have a daily process that needs to iterate over a set of Epics and for each Epic, iterate over its children to calculate custom fields values that are stored on the Epic.  I'm trying to use Jira Automation in Cloud.  My rule starts out with a "For JQL" branch that returns a list of Epics, but from there I can't figure out how to iterate over each Epic to perform calculations based on the Epic's children:

 

Any help would be appreciated,

 

Greg

 

Bill Sheboy

Hi @Gregory Hill 

First thing, this is possible and subject to your number of epics, perhaps a bad idea.  The following is based upon Jira Cloud and would not work for Jira Server/Data Center version.

What is possible:

• Iterate over your list of epics with a branch on JQL
• Inside of the branch, use Lookup Issues to gather information on each epic's children, and make your updates.  https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/jira-automation-actions/#Lookup-issues

The bad idea parts:

• You are limited to up to 100 issues for branches, lookup issues, scheduled triggers, etc. so if you have more than that another solution is needed
• Branches are slow and branching over many epics and then their child items seems like the rule may run for a long time.  This could both exceed your SLA limits for rule execution and fail to run as a result

If your list of epics is small, and they each have less than 100 issues, perhaps try this to see how the rule performs.

Kind regards,
Bill