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JQL for certain Epic parents

Mykenna Cepek

"Initiative" seems to be the most common issue type above Epic. So let's talk about Epics that are children of Initiatives.

I'm looking for a query (JQL) that will give me just the Initiatives that are parents of the Epics in a given project. For example:

Initiative IN-123 has two child Epics ABC-100 and ABC-200.
Initiative IN-124 has child Epics ABC-300, QQ-150 and ZZ-250.
Initiative IN-125 has child Epics ZZ-350 and ZZ-450.

I want a JQL query that will list just IN-123 and IN-124 for project ABC.

A similar JQL query for project QQ should return just IN-124.

So this JQL is solving for "All the initiatives that are parents of Epics in a given project".

The solution needs to NOT specify the exact Epics or Initiatives of interest, but find them dynamically. So, for example, if IN-125 gains a child Epic from the ABC project, the query for the ABC project should now return three Initiatives.

I don't see a way to do this in baseline Jira (Data Center, in my situation). We happen to also have the PowerScripts and ScriptRunner add-ons. But I don't see how either of them can solve this problem either.

A proper solution should be usable by Project Admins. Solutions like the Script Console in ScriptRunner require a Jira Admin, and I'm less interested in those.

Our large organization needs this in order to scope Jira Plan (Advanced Roadmap) configurations to show only the Initiatives that relate to each team/project.

Accepted answers

Mykenna Cepek

Adaptavist support (the folks who make ScriptRunner) suggests that a likely cause is a conflict in function names between multiple Jira add-ons. Documentation on the topic here.

That seems likely to explain what's going on. I'm offering this partial solution while I wait for our Jira Admins to explore solutions in our instance. It's not clear if the functions in another add-on can be disabled to eliminate the conflict with the ScriptRunner functions I want to use.

I'll update here once things get fully resolved for me.

All comments

Clark Everson

Hi @Mykenna Cepek

If you have the correct scriptrunner functions enabled you can do this but if not enabled they would need to be enabled by an admin

issueFunction in parentsOf() should work if i remember correct

Inside the () you have to write another JQL function inside "" and then where ever you would use "" in your normal jql expression use '' instead

What I tend to do is write my JQl expression i want in the quotes first then add the scriptrunner part

Best,

Clark

Trudy P Claspill

In ScriptRunner for Jira DC, parentsOf is for getting parents of subtasks.

https://docs.adaptavist.com/sr4js/latest/features/jql-functions/included-jql-functions/sub-tasks#id-.Subtasksv6.36.0-parents

To get parents of items from Epics upwards you need to use portfolioParentsOf

https://docs.adaptavist.com/sr4js/latest/features/jql-functions/included-jql-functions/portfolio

Mykenna Cepek

It's not clear to me if some ScriptRunner functions aren't enabled or what. I have project-admin privs (not Jira admin privs), so how would I know?

I can say that many functions like parentsOf() and portfolioParentsOf() do not appear in the auto-complete when I'm constructing JQL:

And when I try to use them to return even the most basic, known things, they seem to quietly fail:

I see also that the ScriptRunner documentation linked earlier makes it clear that:

Of course it hasn't been called that for years, having been renamed "Advanced Roadmaps" and now "Plans". Whatever it is, it's definitely part our our Jira Data Server instance, as many teams are using Jira Plans for their roadmapping efforts.

I can't help but call out (strongly) that basic issue hierarchy traversal like this should be a built-in feature for Jira. I realize the historical messiness (subtask parents aren't like story parents, etc). But not being able to use JQL (without add-ons) to find the parent of an issue is ridiculous. But enough pointless complaining.

We've got the add-ons. Why aren't they working?

Trudy P Claspill

Hello @Mykenna Cepek

Looking at your latest images, your subfilter is wrong, I think.

Where you are using ("key=7133") you should be using ("key=ET-7133")

Mykenna Cepek

Adaptavist support (the folks who make ScriptRunner) suggests that a likely cause is a conflict in function names between multiple Jira add-ons. Documentation on the topic here.

I'll update here once things get fully resolved for me.

Mykenna Cepek

I mentioned in my OP: "We happen to also have the PowerScripts and ScriptRunner add-ons." This turned out to be a key to the solution.

We did have function name conflicts due to multiple Jira add-ons being installed. A Jira Admin disabled a couple of PowerScript functions, and I can now use the ScriptRunner functions.

Kudos to Adaptavist support for helping us resolve this fairly quickly (although I feel their documentation might have called out this known potential problem more clearly).

Charles Fortier_yk827y

It might be the ending of formula missing, it was my issue :

issueFunction in parentsOf("filter = 'my filter'", "all")

Without it I was receiving no result and no error message..

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