Automation setup to update Status and Epic Status in an Epic isn't working

[Aimee Davies]

Hi everyone

I was wondering if anyone can help me. I want to be able to routinely run an automation that goes through my epics and if all child tasks are either marked closed or done, then update the fields for the Status and Epic Status of the epic those child tasks live under.

The screengrab is my current setup, I haven't used Additional Fields before and I'm not sure where in my syntax (or any other part of the overall setup) is causing the whole thing not to work. 

Notes - customfield_11602 is apparently the ID for my Epic Status field, I found that by hovering over and seeing what ID displays in the url at the bottom left of the screen. Same for the Status ID (6 being done in my project).

The purpose of this automation setup is to run every week so the Epic Pane in the backlog is clear of Epics that are essentially finished but not removed because of Jira finickiness. 

Thanks in advance for any help!

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @Aimee Davies 

Try using the "fields" attribute just once. Examples can be found here:

https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/advanced-field-editing-using-json/

{
  "fields": {
    "customfield_11602":"Done",
    "Status":"6"
  }
}

[Aimee Davies]

Hi Trudy, thank you I copying and pasting your solution but no dice I'm afraid 

[Trudy Claspill]

I found this post with an answer from @Chris Buzon  that says you can set the Epic Status field thus in an Edit action:

{
  "fields": {
    "Epic Status": {"value": "Done"}
  }
}  

[Aimee Davies]

Oh my god, you are a life saver! Yes this worked. I couldn't figure out how to use this advanced section to also update the regular status but all I did was too add a new component that transitions the epic to closed - thanks to @Walter Buggenhout  for your comment!

Thank you both so much, I've been pondering this one for several days 😁

[Aimee Davies]

If it helps, here's a few more screengrabs that show the insides of each section of the automation.

I also tried this syntax in the Advanced box (correctly indented by using a json checker, but it didn't paste correctly in here)

{
"fields": {
"customfield_11602": {
"id": 10060
},
"Status": {
"id": 6
}
}
}

Any other ideas? 😅

I can do this manually with a JQL query and a bulk edit, but I wanted the automation to trigger every month / 6 weeks so I didn't have to bulk edit over time.

[Walter Buggenhout]

Hi @Aimee Davies,

Rather use the action transition issue (where you can define what status you want to transition the issue to) instead of edit issue.

I would not bother too much about the epic status, as that is being deprecated (see this Community article).

Hope this helps! 

[Aimee Davies]

Hi Walter, thank you for your reply and the link! Although I gave it a test - I added the Done status to my epic issues in the workflow and when I set the status to Done it doesn't remove the epic from the backlog. 

Because I've exposed the Epic Status field in the issue view, I selected Done and this does remove it from the backlog pane.  

So I'm not sure what's going on there but I see the post is from 2022 😅