How to use automation to sum up in EPIC the hours logged in child tickets ?

[Pierre Allard]

Hello all !

I'd like to do exactly what the title says.

So according to the details from this article https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Automation-articles/How-to-sum-up-logged-hours-using-automation-in-Jira-Cloud/ba-p/1409115

I've set up the rule below:

But in "Audit Log" I got error below :

• Log work
  • Error trying to log work against an issue
  • Worklog must not be null., You must indicate the time spent working. (timeLogged)

Then I've tried the to set up the rule below

But I've the same error.

Do you happen to have an idea of the problem ?

Thanks a million in advance for your help !

Pierre.

[Stefan Salzl · Accepted solution]

Hi @Pierre Allard ,

As the article mentioned in your question already points out: it´s not that straight forward with epics. Issues within an epic can not be pointed at directly via "child" connection.

In case it´s about stories/issues directly in an epic I solved this with a "lookup issues action" in between --> see screenshot

Please let me know if this helps.

Best
Stefan

[Pierre Allard]

Hello Stefan,

Here's what I did in my rule and that works very well ! :)

Thanks a lot for your help!

Best.

Pierre.

[Stefan Salzl]

You are welcome @Pierre Allard 

Please be so kind and accept the answer in order to this question appears solved which helps other users in need for the same information find that solution more easily ;)

Best
Stefan

[Brinda]

@Pierre Allard 

Can you please let me know what you wrote in the Date started field?

Thanks,

Brinda

[Brellison]

@Pierre Allard Have you come across the issue of the automation double counting time spent entries?

For example, if I enter 1h of work on a task within an epic, the epic will show 1h. However, if I enter another 1h of work on that same task or another task within the epic, the epic shows 3h. Which makes me believe it counts the previous entries every time.

[Sehreen Jafry]

@Brellison Running into the same issue here. Every time the automation runs, instead of 'over-writing', it adds a new worklog to the previous one hence adding to the previous value.

One workaround would be to delete the previous worklog on epic level before running the rule.

[Pierre Allard]

Hi @Brellison @Sehreen Jafry

You're right, I've faced the same problem. But it seems that automation rule cannot delete worklogs...

[Sehreen Jafry]

@Pierre Allard 
Yeah so I ended up just manually deleted the previous worklog before running this particular automation rule.

That's the only thing I can think of at the moment, till there can be a way to delete the worklog via automation first and then run the automation to sum up the logged hours and save on the EPIC level.

[Hugh Lampert]

Since the work log, IS a rolling work log and you can't delete existing entries through automation, the answer is to check if the sum of the timespent in the exisiting  entries in the EPIC log equate to the sum of the timespent on all the child tasks before adding a new entry to the EPIC.  If the time spent on the EPIC is less than the time spent on all the child tasks, add a new entry to the epic with the difference:

[João Vitor Maurício de Abreu]

Nice work @Hugh Lampert!

I would only divide by 3600 instead of 60, I think you're maybe logging in minutes when they should be in hours. I can't tell if that's how it should work for you because I use Tempo Timesheets, so I just changed this and it worked very well.

[Pierre Allard]

Thank you very much @Hugh Lampert , that works very well ! :)