How do you sum up story points to the epic using jira automation?

[Neil Wills]

How do you sum up story points to the epic using jira automation?

Is there a consequence to summing up the story points to the epic level and updating the epic story points field value?

[Bill Sheboy · Accepted solution]

Hi @Neil Wills  -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

You can do that easily with the Lookup Issues action, using JQL to find the issues with your epic's key in their "epic link" field.  There is an example of that summation in the doc link I provided.

Regarding consequences of changing the epic's field, there may not be any.  Epics normally do not have story points and so I do not believe they are used in any built-in reports.

Best regards,

Bill

[Neil Wills]

I noticed that I will have to be careful, if I sum up the points from stories to epics, and I include the epic in the sprint then it will affect the burndown and velocity reports,

I think as a team we will be keeping epics out of the sprint when they contain a number of stories and they are pointed.

[Neil Wills]

Looking at the Epic history, I am resetting Story Points to None

I tried using:  

{{lookupIssues.Story Points.sum}}

[Neil Wills]

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Neil Wills 

Looking at your draft rule, I think you are missing some pieces to make this complete.  If your use case is "when the story points change for a story, update the parent to contain the sum for its children", consider this example rule:

• trigger: field changes for story points
• condition: issue type is not epic
• condition: epic link is not empty
• action: lookup issues on JQL where "epic link" = {{triggerIssue.epic link}}
• branch: on epic parent
  • edit issue fields: setting the story points to {{lookupIssues.Story Points.sum}}

Of note: this works for a company-managed (classic) project.  If you are using a team-managed (next-gen) project, then:

• substitute "parent" for "epic link"
• substitute "Story Point estimate" for "Story Points"

[Neil Wills]

To confirm, this is a company manage project

[Neil Wills]

I see that Epic Name is available, the field Epic Link is not listed in the dropdown

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi! To which dropdown are you referring?

[Neil Wills]

Progress 

[Neil Wills]

[Neil Wills]

I thought that the 'Issue fields condition' would have provided a field Epic Link, I used a SQL statement instead

[Bill Sheboy]

Did that then work for you?  If so, please consider marking this question as answered to help others find solutions faster.  Thank you!

[Neil Wills]

This was my initial state, it would seem that this approach did not succeed in retrieving the stories related to the epic for the story was modified.  If you read above you will see that solved my use case with Bill's assistance using a difference approach.  Thank you

[Neil Wills]

I found my answer using a different approach, would still like to understand why my original approach did not work

How do you sum up story points to the epic using j... (atlassian.com)

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi, Neil.  Looking at your original rule, it appears you were missing the action to Lookup Issues with JQL before the Branch... That loads up the children of the epic, and then allows the ...sum to work for story points.

[Jon Zacharias]

@Neil Wills @Bill Sheboy any suggestions on troubleshooting this function?

Automation appears to be set up correctly, audit log is registering successful events, but Story Points field is not being updated on the Epic.

Any ideas?

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Jon Zacharias 

You appear to be matching on Epic Name, and not epic key for the match.  Please try changing your lookup issues JQL in the branch to:

project = {{triggerIssue.project.key}}
 AND issueType IN ("story", "Change Request", "Improvement")
 AND "Epic Link" = {{issue.key}}

Also, what is the value you are using in the edit?

Kind regards,
Bill

[Jon Zacharias]

@Bill Sheboy I am in a CMP

And it looks like adding that {[triggerIssue.project}] worked!! How odd since I was seeing the audit log be successful..

The value I am using in the edit is when Story Points changes for Create Issue, Edit Issue

[Bill Sheboy]

That is good to learn. 

And I hope you caught my typo (wrong bracket type) in that smart value as it should have been:

{{triggerIssue.project.key}}

I will fix the post in case others use it.

[Jon Zacharias]

@Bill Sheboy now this is not working again after I tried to clean up my JQL query to match yours?

Do you see anything that I messed up? This is the audit log message

[Bill Sheboy]

Oops...my bad!

{{triggerIssue.project}} is an object, and you only need the key.  Please update the JQL to use:

{{triggerIssue.project.key}}

[Jon Zacharias]

You are the man! We are SO close :) 

Audit log looks good. Query is updated. Everything is looking good....except the Story Points field isn't actually getting updated!....

Any silver bullets for this last issue? 

[Bill Sheboy]

Would you please show what you are using for the edit value?  For example, to sum the values from a lookup issues I would use:

{{lookupIssues.Story points.sum|0}}

The |0 at the end handles the edge case of all of the values are empty (null), so return a zero.

[Jon Zacharias]

@Bill Sheboy I believe I figured it out

I was using {{lookupIssue.Story points.sum}}

I updated it to {{lookupIssues.Story points.sum}}, and it seems to be working

[Stuart Nealis]

Thank you to both @Jon Zacharias and @Bill Sheboy for this detailed troubleshooting, it helped me implement this without issue. Cheers guys!

[Neil Wills]

Let me know if you run into continued issues

[Ron McFarlane]

Unfortunately, this is not working for me and I cannot work out why. The story gets updated with story points and the rule triggers, it successfully looks up the other stories in the Epic and the rule appears to update the epic (PMP1-17). For some reason, the story points on the epic is not being updated. Your guidance would be appreciated. It is a company managed project

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Ron McFarlane 

Smart values are name, spacing, and case-sensitive.  Please try this instead for your edit:

{{lookupIssues.Story points.sum|0}}

When in doubt for what to use for a smart value, please take a look at this how-to article.  It shows how to load an issue and see all possible smart values.

https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/find-the-smart-value-for-a-field/

Also note I stuck a default value of zero on the expression.  This will handle the case of all of the story points being empty (null).

Kind regards,
Bill

[Joshua Yu]

This is the configuration I came up with for team managed projects. hope it helps someone.

[Fernando Cirino Sato]

Hi, it seems lookupIssues option is not avaiable for Jira Server. Any WA to make it work on Jira Server version?

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Fernando Cirino Sato -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

For Server/Data Center version, please take a look at bulk-handling option for branches and scheduled triggers.  That allows you to use the {{issues}} smart value to treat them as a set.

https://confluence.atlassian.com/automation/bulk-handling-of-issues-993924653.html

Kind regards,
Bill