Automation to move Stories to Epics

Ryan Lagola

Hi JIRA community!  

I would like your advice on how I can optimize my JIRA adminstrative work via automation.  We have about 8 timebound epics that close every month and any of the remaining stories that are not completed are moved into another epic that is created at that time. 

The way I do this today, is the following: 

1) I use the bulk upload functionality to create the 8 epics

2) For each Epic, I use a custom JQL search to pull back any stories that are not closed within that Epic and bulk update them to use the new epic ID as the parent. 

3)  I close the old Epic by dragging it across the board.

4) I move the new Epic into IN PROGRESS (requires about 4 transitions to get from backlog to In Progress).

5) I repeat these steps for the remaining epics.

Is there a way to speed this up even more through either some script or automation plugin?  Thanks! 

Bill Sheboy

Hi @Ryan Lagola 

Yes, that is possible with the Automation for Jira addon.  There is a free (Lite) and a paid (Pro) version for Server/Data Center Jira, so check with your site admin if you have either of these. https://confluence.atlassian.com/automation/get-started-with-jira-automation-993924596.html

I recommend creating a test rule in a test project first, for one of the epics, using a manual or scheduled trigger.  And then evaluate what is common/different for the epics.  That will help you decide if you can collapse these down and do them with one rule, branching over the epics...or with separate rules.

If you have challenges creating the rules, please post images of your rule and the audit log details and the community can help you.

Kind regards,
Bill