How do I bulk link issues to a parent QA issue?

Question

Previously we were able to switch to Old View which opened up a linking option in the menu that allowed us to copy and paste in a list of issue keys and it would link all of those to a QA issue at once. it was really useful if someone forgot to unpause a test session during a QA check, or forgot to link the issues when completing the test session, or any other reason. but Old view option seems to be gone, and the linking options provided within the QA issue only seem to allow entering each key one by one, pasting in more than one doesn't seem to take. Is there some other way that I am missing?

Bulk Action options on the filtered list of issues doesn't seem to do it - I tried changing the parent link in the Bulk Edit option here, but it would not recognise the QA issue key, url or name to find and attach them. I can't work out what other option might be the correct one to use.

Screenshots are from an experimental QA I set up using 2 issues to try out bulk linking.

Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira · Answer

Hi @Kimberlea Turner

yep, understood; I just wanted to offer an immediate solution to the problem. I don't know what Atlassian's plans are for a built-in solution, but you should consider commenting on / voting for https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-75508.

Kimberlea Turner · Answer

Thanks for the suggestion, but like I said, this was something we were already able to do via the old issue view, built into Jira, and we shouldn't have to buy something to replace what they have removed. This is what it used to look like: Copy the list, paste it in, click Link, and it was done. Simple, easy, any of our staff could do it.

Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira · Answer

Hi @Kimberlea Turner

to the best of my knowledge, issue linking is not available through Jira's built-in bulk editing feature. The parent link is a special field used by Advanced Roadmaps and, despite it's name, has nothing to do with issue linking as shown in your first screenshot.

Now for a potential solution: If you're open to solutions from the Atlassian Marketplace, I believe your use case would be easy to solve with the app that my team is working on, JXL for Jira.

JXL is a full-fledged spreadsheet/table view that allows viewing, inline-editing, sorting, and filtering by all your issue fields, much like you’d do in e.g. Excel or Google Sheets. This includes, of course, linked issues, and several other issue-linking-related data. It also supports bulk-editing via copy/paste, like so:

You can copy/paste between JXL and pretty much any other app, and update any number of issues in one action - so you should be done with your work in no time! It's also worth noting that JXL can do much more than that: From support for configurable issue hierarchies and groupings, to sum-ups, and conditional formatting.

Any questions just let me know,

Best,

Hannes