JIRA Automation: Updating Custom Field on Epic Level -

joscha.reinhard

Hello, 

I have the following automation in my project: 

The automations ensures that the custom field "Detail Sum Effort CON" at the Epic level is updated whenever the value of the custom field "Detail Effort CON" changes at the Story level.

Automation Workflow:

Trigger:

The rule is triggered when the field "Detail Effort CON" of an issue is modified.

Conditions: 

The issue must be of type Story (Issue Type ID: XXXX).

The issue must be linked to an Epic.

 

Actions within the Epic Branch:

Lookup Issues: A JQL search is performed to find all Stories linked to the same Epic.

The JQL query: "Parent" = {{issue.key}}

This means it searches for all Stories that have the same Epic as their parent.

 

Summation & Updating the Epic Field:

The field "Detail Sum Effort CON" in the Epic is updated with the sum of all "Detail Effort CON" values from the retrieved Stories:

{{lookupIssues."Detail Effort CON".sum|0}}

If no Stories are found, the value is set to 0. 

 

Potential Weakness of the Automation:

If a new Story is added to an Epic, the rule only triggers if its field "Detail Effort CON" is modified. 

If a Story is deleted, there is no direct trigger to update the sum. 

 

So far I have not found a working solution for these questions and hope that you can help me. 

 

Solutions: 

 

A separate rule with the "Issue Created" trigger to recalculate the sum when a new Story is added to an Epic.

 

A seperate rule with "Issue deleted from Epic" trigger to recalculate the sum when a Story is deleted from the Epic or deleted from the project. 

Regards, 

Joscha

 

Bill Sheboy

Hi @joscha.reinhard 

For field sync / sum scenarios there are often many cases involved.  Deciding the accuracy and frequency will determine how many rules are needed and their respective logic.

Here are some of the cases to consider:

1. Story is created with an Epic assigned --> update the Epic
2. Story's field is changed when it has an Epic --> update the Epic
3. Story is removed from an Epic --> update the previous Epic
4. Story is added to an Epic --> update the new Epic
5. Story is changed from one to another Epic --> update both the previous and new Epics (Overlap of #3 and #4)
6. Story is deleted --> update the previous Epic (Special case of #3)
7. Person manually changes the field in the Epic --> update the Epic to recalculate the sum
8. Story and Epic issues exist before the rules were implemented --> using a Scheduled trigger rule, identify and update all of the relevant Epics
9. Atlassian has a production delay (or outage) for rule execution --> As it is unknown if the rules will or will not "catch up" for the changes to run, use the Scheduled trigger rule from #8 above once the outage resolves.  There is such an outage happening right now: https://jira-software.status.atlassian.com/

Some of these rules can be combined, using conditional logic.  For example, # 3, 4, and 5.

Others are subject to problems / racetrack errors apparently due to defects in automation after the change to sunset the "Epic link" field and switch to the "parent" field.  For example, there are defects which would impact # 1, 3, 4, 5, and possibly 6.  Here are the defects if you want to watch / vote for them to see updates:

• https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/AUTO-1616
• https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/AUTO-1737

 

You also appear to have a Premium license level, and so have more automation usage capacity available.  When one has a Free or Standard license level, using this many rules to sync a field value could easily consume the monthly allocation for rules, halting their execution.  The workaround for that is to use a single, scheduled trigger rule to only update once per day.

 

Kind regards,
Bill