How to auto update all start/end dates if I change one linkd task start/end date within an epic?

Question

New to Jira so still learning. But all tasks in each epic are sequential (and linked), and I want to be able to set the number of days for each task and the first tasks start/end dates and have the rest automatically populate. Similar to MS project - I want to be able to manipulate schedule with number of days - is this possible in Jira?

Started playing with automation - and got this far (see below) before I'm lost and don't know how to finish or even if I'm on track!

- When: Values change for

due date, start date

- If: linked issues present

types: all link types

- Then: Edit issue fields

start date

The number of days was helpful for working through tasks so would be useful if we can have it in Jira too - but not essential!

Any suggestions helpful please!!!

Bill Sheboy · Answer

Hi @Kate Cook -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

Adding to Valerie's answer...

Depending upon the specifics of your scenario, this may or may not be possible with automation rules.  If you provide a specific example of "before" and "after", the community can offer ideas.  Until then...

You describe the behavior of a tool like MS Project, which not only understands the dependency linking of items, each of which has a forecast, it can process them in a defined manner and order of updates (backward and forward).

I suspect that is not possible with automation rule branching in your scenario.  The reason is branches on more than one thing process in parallel, and so a rule cannot easily "walk the chain" of linkages.  A special case would be if each issue had one-and-only-one link in a specific direction.  Even then, the rule would be brittle because if it failed, it may not be re-startable.

There was a post from the Atlassian team a while ago about considering adding the feature you describe directly to the roadmap / timeline view, so editing one issue updates the chain.  I have not seen anything on that in a couple of years.

If you truly need capability like that in MS Project, you may want to check the Atlassian Marketplace for any addon apps.

Kind regards,
Bill

Valerie Knapp_dpp5c6 · Answer

Hi @Kate Cook , welcome to the Atlassian Community and thanks for your question!

I always recommend that people check out the Jira automation template library. It is a free resource with a bunch of worked examples for automations. Normally you can find something that is relatively close to where you want to get to and then just modify slightly.

For your case, I found this - Jira automation template library | Atlassian

In your case, you could also, instead of copying the date from the issue that called the automation, you can also set a date with a smart value -

Jira smart values - date and time | Cloud automation Cloud | Atlassian Support

So you could say, when something is changed to update the date to the trigger issue date plus days / weeks / etc

Please take a look at these resources, if you haven't already, and let us know if we can be of more help.

Cheers