How do I automatically trigger a status change on a parent issue based on the status of its children's statuses when a child's status is updated?

andreas_qezsu8

We are trying to automate our workflow. Here is what we would like to do:

We want to change the status of a parent issue (a story) when the status of one of its children changes. For example, suppose I have a story on the backlog that has 5 children that are also on the backlog. As soon as one of those children transitions from the backlog to an "in progress" state, I'd like to update the status of the story to have the status of "in progress" as well. The story would then stay in a status of "in progress" until its last child not yet in the state of "done" moves into a state of "done". At that time the story would be moved to a status of "done". We'd like to do this in an automated way so we never have to actually change the statuses of our stories.

Is this possible with your plugin? If we we'd love to know how to accomplish this. I can see how I would auto transition all subtasks from a change on the story, but not the other way around like we need it. There are lots of people trying to do the same thing online and there is really not a simple way to do it other than scripting it yourself. I am hoping Automation for JIRA can make this a bit easier.

andreas_qezsu8

You can certainly do this with Automation for JIRA.  The rule is a little complex, but here's an example:

So lets break this down:

• First we execute this rule whenever an issue is being transitioned
• Next we check using a compare condition that the issue is a 'Sub-task'. We could have also used a JQL condition, but compare is a little faster to execute
• The we branch of for the parent using the 'related issues' action
  • We now check with a 'Related issues condition' that some sub-tasks are "In Progress"
  • We also check with a compare condition that the parent issue is not currently "In Progress"
  • If those are true, then we transition the parent issue to "In Progress"
• We have another branch point for the parent using the 'related issues' action
  • We check this time if all sub-tasks are "Done" using the 'Related issues condition'
  • If that's true, then we transition the parent to "Done"

The 2 'related issues' condition inside the two branch points, basically make sure the two branches are mutually exclusive and only one will ever execute.  Hope this makes sense!

 

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