Jira Automation. Edit a Sub-task.

edianth.rodriguez

Hi, I hope someone can help me.

I am working on a Jira Automation rule. The context is the following:

There is a ticket, a parent issue, and at certain points, as we transition this issue through the workflow, some sub-tasks are automatically created.

For example:

• In status "X", 5 sub-tasks are created.
• In status "Y", another 5 sub-tasks are created.

My rule should do the following:

As soon as Sub-task "3" reaches a final status, the assignee of Sub-task "6 "should be changed. The new assignee should be taken from the "Responsible X" field of the parent issue.

The problems I have are:

• In the parent ticket's JSON, there is no information about the sub-tasks' assignees.
• In the sub-task's JSON, there is no information about the parent's field.
• The trigger is one sub-task, but the action needs to affect another sub-task, and for that I also need information from the parent issue.

I have tried many different actions and triggers without success.

I tried accessing the parent information using Branch Rule / Related Issues → Parent and saved the information in a variable. Sadly, I cannot use this variable in a JQL search.

I also tried using Lookup Issues, but without any success.

Does anyone know how I could approach this?

Thanks!

Narek Pirumyan

Hi @edianth.rodriguez, this is doable if you label the sub-tasks by order when they are created and use that label in a second rule.

Rule 1 (creation): when you create the 5 sub-tasks, set a label on each one that records its order, e.g. order-1 to order-5, and order-6 to order-10 for the second batch.

Rule 2 (reassignment):

1. Trigger: Work item transitioned, to your final status.
2. Condition: Work item type is Sub-task and Labels contains order-3.
3. Branch: Related work items > JQL (advanced branching), with a query like:
   parent = {{issue.parent.key}} AND labels = "order-6"
4. Inside that branch, Edit work item (the active work item is now sub-task 6). Use More options / additional fields JSON to set the assignee from the parent's field:
   {"fields": {"assignee": {"accountId": "{{issue.parent.customfield_XXXXX.accountId}}"}}}
   Replace customfield_XXXXX with the ID of "Responsible X" (works for a user picker field).

Two things to check:

• Atlassian's smart value docs only list a few parent properties explicitly, so first add a Log action printing {{issue.parent.customfield_XXXXX}} to confirm the value returns. If it doesn't, add a Lookup work items action inside the branch (JQL: key = {{issue.parent.key}}) and read the field from {{lookupIssues}} instead.
• If sub-task 6 is created later than sub-task 3 is closed, the rule won't find it. In that case add a small second rule that runs when sub-task 6 is created and checks whether sub-task 3 is already done.

Hope that helps. A screenshot of your rule would make it easier to debug if something doesn't match.