I would like to sync product discovery ticket fields with a delivery ticket created from that ticket

Question

I would like to sync product discovery ticket fields with a delivery ticket created from that ticket. I believe this will need to be done with an automation, but I'm having issues making this work. I've been testing with the copying the description field in the product discovery ticket to the delivery ticket when it is created, but would like to do this with multiple fields on the product discovery ticket. I would also like to be able to use an automation(s) to keep the two tickets in sync, so that when certain fields in one ticket are updated, the other ticket is updated as well. Could someone please provide examples of how to do this?

Ted Nieblas_xoxnwo · Answer

@Brian Harkness

I would be careful trying to synch Description fields between projects. The Description field is a standard Jira field that is user editable at any time. This means that someone could completely erase or replace the entire description in either project leading to a "who changed it last" condition.

For this exact reason, I have avoided synching the description field entirely. For content that is shared between multiple projects, I create a Confluence page and embed it in a Custom Paragraph field in the ticket (not the description field although I guess you could do that). By using a Confluence page, I ensure that the content has a single place where it is to be updated without the need of automation (Jira will always show the updated page).

I use smart links to paste the Confluence page URL in the field in Jira. You will have to update the fields renderer (at least you did have to do this) from the default render to the "WIKI Style Renderer" so that the Smart link will work. (see this post to see how that is accomplished. Solved: Change render on custom field).

I hope this helps.

Brian Harkness · Answer

Thanks that did help, particularly the link type, which wasn't immediately obvious. My issue now is that Description in PD isn't recognized as the same field as description in Jira. I need to set up global fields in PD so that when I specify Description field in PD it is copied to description field in Jira.

Dmitry Astapkovich _Colined_ · Answer

Hello Brian,

There's another approach to this: you can use 3rd party apps that can report on linked issues. Delivery tickets are connected to JDP issues via "is implemented" issue link. Therefore you can use an app that will take your source JDP issue(s) extend it with linked delivery tickets. I know that as a vendor of Pivot Report. I did quite a few demos for our customers on that:

Please note that you can choose how the progress is calculated: based on all issues or just "leaf" one. In the example above Completion Rate is 75%, though only 3 issues out of total 7 are complete. But in reality source JDP idea, Epic and Task 2 are only "containers" for the actual tasks and sub-tasks.

If you switch it to All issues, the result will be different:

This is something you need to take into consideration when you create automation rules as well. Not every issue worth to be counted as a part of the overall progress.

It worth mentioning that Pivot Report does all types of progress, pivot tables, charts, etc. You check the screenshot below or play around with demo reports on your own:

Pivot Report can be used as a stand alone report, dashboard widget(s) and gadget right in the Issue View. Embedding to Confluence and downloading a static snapshot is also there.