Using automation to get the Epic of a Sub-Task (Parent of a Parent)

Halley Nikolak

Does anyone one know how to get the Epic associated to a subtask without using the "Epic (parent)" branching rule (as it will be demised in the near future)

I am able to create a rule to the parent (story), however I would also like to perform actions to the Epic related to that story, but it does not seem possible to branch and retrieve the parent of a parent.

The overall goal I am trying to accomplish is to create a rule so when changing the Subtask status from to-do to in-progress, the Story above, and the Epic will also be updated to the same status

Thanks

Bill Sheboy

Hi @Halley Nikolak -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

The actions for the grandparent of the subtask (i.e., the epic) impact what is needed:

• If you are trying to edit it, the rule will need to branch to it, probably with JQL
• If you are only trying to read field data from it, you could use Lookup Issues with JQL to get to it

The reason for this need is if all the rule smart values / links worked through all levels, pulling all the field data, the tree could contain a large number of issues.  Such as:

{{issue.parent.parent.parent...}}

Reviewing the available smart values for an issue with a parent, using the how-to article below, you can see only a subset of the data for a parent is provided with an issue: https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/find-the-smart-value-for-a-field/

I believe it is possible to create one rule, which triggers itself, to make the updates you describe.  But that could lead to looping errors.  Instead you may want to create two rules: one for the subtask/Story parent interaction and that triggers the second rule for the Story/Epic interaction.

Kind regards,
Bill