Update Start Date field of User Story when linked Task transitions

[Kathryn Swearingen]

Hi all,

Hoping to find help for how to write an automation rule that will update a User Story's Start Date field when a linked Task's status is transitioned to "In Progress".

High level flow of how we work: our group manages updates to websites. 

1. Epic - one Epic to represent the scope of the project (that scope could be updating just one page on the site, or it could be for building a brand-new site). Any associated tickets related to the project are linked to the Epic.

2. User Story - we break work down into a per-page basis, and sometimes smaller components that are global to all pages of the site. We use User Stories as a sort of "container" to which we link Tasks (not sub-tasks) 

3. Task - we use Task, not sub-task, for each stakeholder. Most importantly, each User Story will have at least a developer-specific Task and a QA-specific Task so they can track their effort for the work via the Story Points field

Right or wrong, this is our WoW upon which PowerBI reports are generated for all sorts of metrics. 

We now have a requirement to track the Start Date of a web page (or User Story), which is accomplished through updating the Start Date field in the User Story. The trigger for that is based on when the Developer updates their linked Task from "To Do" to "In Progress". 

How can we write an automatic rule (not manual trigger rule) that will (here's the rule in plain words): 
When a developer-specific Task is transitioned from "To Do" to "In Progress" then find the User Story that is linked to that Task and update that User Story's Start Date field with the current date. 

If it matters, all issues associated with the Epic use the same Epic Link and Fix Version, and I have many rules set up with Labels (ex: the developer-specific Task has a unique label, same for QA and so on). 

[Petter Gonçalves]

Hello @Kathryn Swearingen

Thank you for reaching out.

Per your description, it would be easy to create an automation rule to properly update the start date field of the Story issue when the status of the linked task is changed. I just would like to confirm with you if the following setting is configured:

1. You must have a way to identify which story is linked to which task in the automation rule to achieve your goal. You mentioned that you have linked the Story and related tasks in some way, but can you confirm if you used Issue links to properly link the Stories and tasks you have?

If you have the setting above properly configured, then you can easily create an automation rule by following the steps below:

1. Navigate to your project > Project settings > Automation
2. Create a new automation rule following this template:
   

The logic behind that automation would be the following:

1. Trigger: The rule will be automatically triggered when any issue is transitioned from "To do" to "In Progress"
2. Condition: The condition will check if the issue that triggered the rule is a developer-specific Task, by checking if the unique label you created is present.
3. Linked issues Branch: Supposing the issue passed the previous condition, this branch will identify and consider the linked Story of the developer-specific Task. You just need to add the correct issue link type to identify the Linked story.
4. Action inside the branch: As the branch is considering the linked story, you should add here the action to edit the Start date. You can use the smart value {{now}} to properly get the current date and time.

Let us know if you have any questions.

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Kathryn Swearingen 

Yes, and...to the answer from @Petter Gonçalves 

You may want to add a condition to test for linked issues which are not yet completed.  Otherwise those could have their start dates changed even though they are "done".

Kind regards,
Bill