Sum up story points from Epic to Odyssey after initial action has run summing story points to Epic

[Stephanie Discerni]

Hi there,

Hoping someone can help with next steps to get story points from Epics summing to the parent Odyssey after the initial 'Sum up story points to Epic' action has occurred.

I've already set up an automation to sum story points from tasks to epics using the template from the library (Sum up story point estimates in Epic) and that is working. Can I add another action the then sum story points from Epics to Odysseys and how would I do this?

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @Stephanie Discerni 

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

How have you created the relationship between the Epics and the Odysseys?

Are you using a Premium or Enterprise subscription? Has the issue type hierarchy been modified so that when you are in an Odyssey you can Add a Child to it that is an Epic type issue?

Or are you using the Link Issue feature to create a relationship between the Epic and the Odyssey?

Are the Epic and the Odyssey in the same project?

[Stephanie Discerni]

Hi Trudi,

We are using Premium subscription and the relationship is as you described - the issue type hierarchy has been modified so that when you are in an Odyssey you can Add a Child to it that is an Epic type issue.

We are not using the link issue feature to create a relationship between the two. Yes the Epic and Odyssey are in the same project.

[Trudy Claspill]

Thank you for that additional information.

In that case the rule you have will work for updating the Odyssey issues also. You need to make sure that on the Rule Details page the box is checked for "Check to allow other rule actions to trigger this rule."

[Stephanie Discerni]

Hi Trudy,

Thank you for your help, that worked and now Odyssey issues are updating with the story points sum as well.

The only issue is when no Odyssey parent exists, the rule still runs and updates the Epic but then fails as it can't find an issue key for an Odyssey, which means a lot of rule failed emails are starting to come through.

Is there a way to add a condition that checks the parent issue key is not blank?

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Stephanie Discerni 

You don't actually need the Lookup Issues action in your rule. It doesn't serve any purpose. If you remove that there will not be an error recorded for the rule execution. It will still be triggered, but the Branch command will recognize that there is no Parent issue and the status of the rule will be "No Actions Performed".

[Stephanie Discerni]

Hi Trudy,

I tried removing the Lookup Issues action, and now the rule appears as successful however the actual field value on the parent does not update with the new story point total. Actually it looks like it's setting the story points value to 0.

This is the JSON object I'm using from the Template automation:

{
"fields": {
"Story Points": {{lookupIssues.Story Points.sum|0}}
}
}

[Trudy Claspill]

Oh goodness gracious! I was wrong. My apologies.

You do need the Lookup Issues because you are using that to get to the sum of the child issues.

You can move the Lookup Issues action to be within the branch instead of before the branch. Then it will only be performed when there is a parent for the trigger issue. After moving it, change the JQL to 

parent={{issue.key}}

Within the branch {{issue}} will refer to the parent issue rather than the trigger issue.

[Stephanie Discerni]

That worked! Thank you so much for all your help I really appreciate it!