How can i link an initiative in one project to a epic in another project with automation?

Question

Hi, I have a problem.

I have two projects. A management project (Project ABC) shows the status of all our team's projects.

Project ABC includes projects A, B, and so on. If a project reaches a certain status, the app "Project & Issue Templates for Jira" creates a copy of the project blueprint.

Project B is one such created project with lots of epics, tasks and subtasks. I want to link all the epics of project B to the corresponding issue "Project B" in project A. How can I select the corresponding issue in project ABC?

Bill Sheboy · Answer

Hi @Chris M_

Sorry for the delay in responding as I have been offline for a few weeks.

Lookup Issues can gather a list of issues.  Have you confirmed there is one-and-only-one returned?

And, it appears from your screen image of the Create Variable action there is a leading space before the smart value.

Please try this as the smart value for the action:

Thanks,
Bill

Chris M__gum577 · Answer

Hi Bill, thanks for the replay.

Now I have adjusted my rule but there is still no improvement. With "Create Variable" I captured the lookup issue key and with "Edit Issue"-block I added the created variable as a parent. (I tried both ways separately: "Edit issue" fields - "Parent" and "Edit issue" fields - "Linked issues" (is parent and relates to).

I get an error:

EDIT ISSUE
Error when editing issues
FXX-XX(Could not find issue by id or key. (parent))

Ok, if I link the issues to the parent manually, I need to check "Show down issues" - but how can I do this in automations?

Kind regards,

Chris

Bill Sheboy · Answer

Hi @Chris M_ -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

I note two things for your scenario to help adjust your rule...

1) When you want to link issues in a rule, you need the key to one issue and the other needs to be "in scope" at a point in the rule.

And so you could either branch to one issue and the link to the trigger issue, or you could find the key of the other issue and add a link to it using its smart value.

2) In your scenario you note accessing multiple projects.  A single project rule may create (or clone) issues into another project, but it cannot access them otherwise...such as for linking.

To change your rule to multiple-project scope, please work with your Jira Site Admin as they will need to make the change in the global rule configuration.

Kind regards,
Bill