Automation to sync multiple specific labels from parent to child issues

Daniel Lee_q3mbm1

Hello, I’m trying to set up a Jira automation that does the following:

1. Look at a parent issue (Epic) and check to see if they have any/many/all of the following labels:
   Type_PI1<br>Type_PI2<br>Type_PI3<br>Type_PI4
Type_PI5<br><br>

2. If the Epic has any of these labels, perform an action where the child inherits these labels (Epic -> Stories/Tasks -> Subtasks).

3. Also, if any labels are removed from the parent, they should also be removed from all children.

I’ve had challenges particularly with the point (3), making sure labels removed from the parent actually are removed from the children. For instance, when someone updates the labels in bulk (i.e. user removes Type_1 & Type 2, then changes it to Type_3 & Type 4. The issue history just shows a single “labels changed” entry, which I think makes it hard for automation to detect what was added vs what was removed.

I'm not sure if I need multiple rules here, or a scheduled rule that simply re-syncs children to match the parent rather than relying on the “field changed” trigger.

I don’t mind which approach as the important thing is to have a reliable setup that keeps the labels sync'd.

Has anyone set up something like this or can help me resolve this query please? 

Thanks in advance!

Note: Here are a couple of screenshots of a rule I've tried without success. I'm just trying at a Story to Sub-Task for now. 

Bill Sheboy

Hi @Daniel Lee 

When do you want the labels synched?  You show a couple of example rules, where one uses a Scheduled trigger and the the other uses Field Value Changed for the labels.

Next, you note examples of adding / removing labels and of just keeping them aligned.  Have you tried rules where they just copy the labels from the parent work item to completely replace them?

Finally, you seem to be describing only update cases. However, there are several others, potentially requiring multiple rules.  Please consider which cases you want to cover, as they included at least these:

• When the labels change in a parent work item, update its children to match
• When a work item is created with a parent, copy from the parent
• When a work item is removed from a parent, do ???
• When a work item changes parents, copy the labels from the new parent
• When a work item changes type such that it no longer has a parent, do ???
• When someone changes the labels in a child work item, reset them back to the parent?
• When Atlassian has an outage preventing rules from rules from running, they do not necessarily all run later to "catch up" for different events (e.g., work item edit).  For this case, it can help to have a scheduled trigger rule with JQL to update any out-of-synch work items.
• This amount of field synching can use up a bit of automation capacity.  Given different license level, service limits, this means rules may halt running in the site if the limits are hit.  Please talk to your Jira Product / Site Admin if you have concerns about this, which can sometimes be mitigated with less frequent field updates.

Some of these cases can be combined to use fewer rules.

 

Kind regards,
Bill