Automation for rolling up timetracking to Epic when moving tasks

Former user

I have some automation that on an epic rolls up the estimates for the tasks/stories within the epic. The trigger for this is a value change in time tracking on the task, however I am trying to understand if I can easily add in an additional trigger which would be if a task is moved to an epic?

For example, I create a task and add an estimate but no epic (or the incorrect epic). I then assign the task to an epic but the Epic estimate roll up therefore isn't picking up that task's estimate (and likewise the epic I'm moving it from doesn't remove that task's estimate from it's own rolled up estimate).

Any ideas would be welcome! In previous places we used JMCF to achieve estimate roll up fields on epics but seeing if I can achieve it through automation in the first instance here without needing to get an add on for creating those custom fields.

Bill Sheboy

Hi @rob.jeal 

Short answer: no, that is not fully possible with automation rules, although it can be worked around with additional rules

 

Longer answer:

For a scenario that sums a field from child issues to an epic, there are multiple conditions which could lead to a need to sum again...

• field value changes in a child issue
• new child issue is created and assigned to the epic
• existing child issue is newly assigned to an epic
• existing child issue is changed from one epic to another one
• existing child issue is deleted (or marked as abandoned)
• other automation rules do any of the above things
• tampering: someone manually alters the sum field in the epic
• Atlassian outage: refreshing the epic sum field when automation rules do not run, or do not run when expected
• etc.

Some of these could trigger the same event (and thus rule), but many do not.  The team must decide what level of accuracy do they want for the sum field, as that will determine the number of rules and their complexity.

Kind regards,
Bill