Return parent information with subtasks JQL search

Ripley-Duggan, Christopher

Hi all,

I'm using the Jira Cloud for Excel add-in to create a sheet of subtasks with worklogs attached to them. My current search looks like this, and returns almost everything I'm looking for:

JQL - issuetype in subtaskIssueTypes() AND worklogdate >= startOfYear()

Fields - Key, summary, logwork (seconds, name, started), Fusion Project, Issue Type, Parent, Project

What I'm now trying to achieve is to go "x" amount of levels upwards (linked issue > linked epic > linked project) and return any fields from those parents which aren't included on the subtask search...hope that makes sense! 😅

*Edit - What I've also resorted to doing is a duplicate sheet that has issuetype in standardIssueTypes() instead of subtaskissuetypes, and then doing some finicky xlookup returns between sheets, but I'm really hoping I can get rid of this step somehow

Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira

Hi @Ripley-Duggan, Christopher

welcome to the community!

This has come up a few times IIRC, and unfortunately, I don't think that "native" JQL can do that. You may have to copy the data from the parent issues to the respective sub-tasks, e.g. using Automation or Scriptrunner, or do the exact lookup trick that you mentioned.

Just as an alternative route: There's a number of more "hierarchy-focused" apps that can generate hierarchical views for you - not so much through "native" JQL, but through custom logic to resolve parent/child relationships. I know that Structure is very popular, and I myself work on an app named JXL for Jira. 

I can, of course, only speak for JXL, but it feels like your use case could be quite elegantly solved using JXL. Here's how this would work:

• Create a so-called "sheet" in JXL that includes your sub tasks and any potential parent issue. At this stage, don't worry about parent/child relationships; JXL will sort this out for you.
• In JXL, enable the issue hierarchy view. This can be done in one click.
• You can now view, inline-edit, sort and filter your issues very much like you're familiar with from Excel, or export your view as an XSLX file.

This is how it looks in action (you can configure the fields to be shown):

As you can see, the parent data are "above" the child issue data, not in the same row. I understand from your post that you might want that. This is something we want to add in the future (but may be available in other apps; I'm not sure).

Hope this helps,

Hannes