How do I get a list of tasks and a count of the number of sub tasks for each?

Question

I need to get a report of how many sub tasks there are for each standard task.  We create sub tasks each time there is an issue reported against a main task.  We are looking to use this to then highlight problem tasks by the number of sub tasks it has.  The more sub tasks, the more problems it has.  I can't find any way or anything obvious to do this.

Can anyone help?

Haydn Robinson · Answer

Thanks @Hannes.  I'll have a look at this, could be just what I need!

Dave Rosenlund (Trundl) · Answer

Hi, @Haydn Robinson.  As you can probably tell from the other answers, there's no easy way to do what you describe with Jira "out-of-the-box."

Rather than promote yet another marketplace app., what I'd like to do is suggest you learn how to craft the right searches for the right app on the Atlassian Marketplace (although, I am not presuming you don't already know).

This Atlassian Community article,

How to Evaluate Jira Apps: Advice for Solution-Hunting

talks about how to find the right app.

In your case, I suggest start with "spreadsheet" as your search term. What you describe sounds a lot like what one might do in a spreadsheet-like app designed for Jira.

Make sure you select Jira for "Product" and "Cloud" for hosting type when you search. You also choose how to sort the search results: by review rating, by number sold, etc. And, consider whether your want to filter by apps that are Cloud Fortified.

Hope this helps,

-dave

Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira · Answer

Hi @Haydn Robinson

here's another app that you might like: JXL for Jira.

JXL is a full-fledged spreadsheet/table view for your issues that allows viewing and inline-editing all your issues fields, plus a number of "special fields" that aren't natively available. One of these special fields is the "number of sub tasks".

This is how it looks in action:

As you can see above, you can view, sort, and filter by the number of subtasks. You could also group by the number of sub tasks (and for any other field, by the way) and calculate different kinds of "sum ups" across these groups, or even across complex issue hierarchies. Of course you can export your view to Google Sheets or Excel with just one click, if further processing is needed. Disclaimer: I work on JXL :)

Hope this is helpful,

Best,

Hannes