Automation: Transitioning a subtask when another subtask under the same parent transition

Davide Orbitello

Hello,

I'm trying to build an automation that should make transitioning a subtask from one status to another when another subtask under the same parent makes a transition.

So with my automation I'm  trying to check if the two summaries match, and if so make the older ticket transition to the same status "DONE" as the last created one.
Checking the audit log, the problem looks to be that the automation cannot target the old subtask, but try to get the parent or the trigger issue. I was wondering if the problem could be that the "ADJUSTMENT NEEDED" status is a green status and maybe the automation cannot handle it.

Can you please help?

Walter Buggenhout

Hi @Davide Orbitello,

Trying to take this step by step. Have a good look at my assumptions along the way to make sure I understand correctly what you are trying to do.

So with my automation I'm  trying to check if the two summaries match, and if so make the older ticket transition to the same status "DONE" as the last created one.

If I get this right and look at your screenshot, DR-1430 is your trigger issue that has just transitioned to DONE and you are trying to automatically transition DR-1429 to DONE as well as it is the subtask of the same parent and has the same summary?

In your FOR JQL branch, I would try to get to the exact issue(s) you want to modify first of all in one go. Although I have some doubts I'll come back to, you could try to modify your JQL to something like this:

parent = {{triggerIssue.parent.key}} AND summary ~{{triggerIssue.summary}}
AND issueType = Subtask and key != triggerIssue.key

That would immediately exclude your triggering issue from the result set and allow you to eliminate the first condition in your branch.

I suppose that your second condition is there to make sure the summary of the issue(s) returned by your JQL query is exactly the same as that of your trigger issue. However, I don't see where you initiated {{lookupIssues}} anywhere in your rule. I would think the following comparison should work instead:

{{triggerIssue.summary}} equals {{issue.summary}}

As a last step on your immediate topic: to be able to transition the issue to done, your workflow must provide a valid transition from the issue's current status into Done. That the current issue has a green status is definitely not a suspected reason why the issue can't transition. Either a missing transition or additional custom conditions or workflow properties you or your admin built in yourself may have an impact.

I think you're just not getting to the correct issue to transition, in summary.

Apart from that, and on a separate note. I can't quite wrap my head around how you end up with duplicate subtasks under the same parent. Since you want to close them automatically, I am assuming (and I may be wrong there), that these are actually identical items.

If that is true and I was in control of the process, I would try to resolve the problem earlier on and not at the time of closing an issue. Using much of the logic you already have in place, you could

• consider closing the newly created issue immediately when it appears to be an exact copy of one that already exists;
• send a notification to the user who just created an issue that seems very much the same as one that is already there and ask them to review immediately;
• create a link between the same issues, so you can then use that link to easily manipulate related issues instead of working from the summary

Hope this helps!