Video on How to Automate the Epics, Stories and Sub tasks

[Athira K]

Hi All, 

When I create an Epic for my project, I wanted to get the Standard stories or tasks and Sub tasks under the stories or tasks, created automatically. Requesting you to help with with a video recording for better understanding. 

To make it specific and clear on what Iam looking ---

When I create an EPIC, Iam expecting to see the below tasks/stories created under it automatically

STORY 1 ------->  Sub task 1 , sub task 2, Sub task 3

STORY 2---------> Sub task 1 , sub task 2, Sub task 3

STORY 3---------> Sub task 1 , sub task 2, Sub task 3

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @Athira K 

Welcome to the Atlassian community!

If you are working with a Company Managed project, you can find such a video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF1S-cVMIw4

This video shows how to create issues under an Epic.

The only thing it is missing is creation of subtasks under the created child issue, which I have shown in the image below.

[Athira K]

Hi Trudy,

Thank you for your quick response, I tried the above which you have provided (Screenshot below) 

But when I created the Epic this is what I got 

And if you see the Story is missing in Epic and it just only created the sub task.  Like I said I wanted to create Epic which contains stories along with Sub tasks inside the stories. 

EPIC ---->STORY 1 ------->  Sub task 1+sub task 2+Sub task 3

I already automated "Automating stories under Epic &  Automating sub tasks under stories or tasks etc."  

and its working fine, so to incorporate both these rules into one rule can we use some merging options or branching options? Are you aware of any of those? 

Can you pls advise how to proceed or in case if I am missing something.

Thank you so much for helping me. 

[Trudy Claspill]

My apologies for misleading you.

The way I presented the rule, the subtask would indeed be created in the Epic rather than the Story.

You could do this with two automation rules; one to create Stories and one to create subtasks, as @Christopher Maxwell suggested.

Here is another way to create both in one rule. This method works to create Stories with Subtasks underneath them. 

This time I tested it out to make sure it works. ;-)

The first three steps remain the same:

1. Trigger: Issue Created
2. Condition: Type is Epic
3. Action: Create issue - in same project, Story, and set the Epic Link field to {{triggerIssue.key}}

The next steps would be:

4. Action: Re-fetch

5. Action: Create Variable (to record the Key of the newly created Story)

6. Action: Create Issue - in same project, Subtask, set Parent to the variable you created.

You would repeat Step 6 to create additional Subtasks under the first story.

Then you would repeat steps 3 through 6 to create another Story with another set of Subtasks.

[Christopher Maxwell]

@Trudy Claspill Great info here.

[Athira K]

Hi Trudy,

First of all apologies for the delayed response and secondly a big thanks for helping me out here. But unfortunately I am still not getting the desired result here and I have been testing this out from past one week. So I wanted to share the screenshot of the Audit log and the rule here, I am requesting you to take a look and help me out one last time, in case if Iam missing something here. 

Once again thank you so much for putting time and helping me out . 

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Athira K 

Please show us the details of the Create Variable action.

[Athira K]

Hi Trudy,

Here you go and pls let me know if you need any additional info from my end.

Thank you  for looking into this again. 

[Trudy Claspill]

I have when I run the rule in my own environment against a Company Managed Software project I do not encounter the problem you are encountering. 

- My first new Story is correctly created under the Epic.

- My first new Subtask is created under the Story just created.

- I can successfully create another new Story, and another new Subtask under the second new Story.

If you have been making a lot of edits to this one rule I would suggest trying to remake the rule from scratch. I have heard of instances where rules have behaved in unexpected ways after many different edits have been made to them.

[Athira K]

Hi Trudy,

Thank you so much for helping me again, let me try a few more round soon like you mentioned in other environments and will confirm if working.

But again, I have no words to thank you for helping me this far. Will keep you posted. 

Athira.

[michelle.purcell]

@Trudy Claspill 

I just wanted to thank you for the detail you provided.  I was able to use this for the basis of an automation for when a label is added to fire off a story and associated subtask!  

[Aleksandra Bosacka _Deviniti_]

Hello @Athira K 

It’s Aleksandra from Deviniti - the vendor of the Issue Templates for Jira app 👋

If you’re open to using a plugin and would like to accommodate other cases as well, as an alternative to automation you could use our plugin to create different kinds of templates (e.g. for bug reports or feature requests) and then apply them automatically with a dedicated post function.

This way, you could easily manage the content of issues, and populate the whole structures of Epics, issues under Epic, sub-tasks, and links, as well as set up field values directly in a template.

For more details about the templates repository and post function, I encourage you to see our official documentation available here. Hopefully, you will find it useful!

Cheers,
Aleksandra

[Christopher Maxwell]

Hi Athira,

Great question! First, let me say that it's great you are looking to automate tasks. 

Yet, unfortunately, I do not have video recording capability functional at this time, but I can still share some ideas to help you.

In Jira, automatically creating new issues would be done via Automation. Jira has a great tutorial complete with screenshots that walks through the process of creating an automation to open sub tasks:

https://www.atlassian.com/agile/tutorials/how-to-auto-create-subtasks-with-jira-software-automation

The one difference you may want to consider:

• In the tutorial, the automation has a trigger which runs any time a new issue is created. The automation then creates three sub-tasks.
• Instead, you may want a manual trigger for your automation. If that is the case, when creating the automation, in the trigger field, choose "manual". You will then have an option on your ticket to run the automation from the ticket.

Have you created automations before? They aren't hard to get started but are very powerful and can be tricky. What's nice here is that you would be starting out with a simple automation!

[Athira K]

Hi Christopher, 

Thank you for your response :)

To answer your question, yes Iam working on automation and I have already tried automating 

Automating stories under Epic, Automating sub tasks under stories or tasks etc. 

But like I said I am unable to create (Automate) Epic which contains a story and a sub tasks insider the story and I tried various methods already. 

EPIC ---->STORY 1 ------->  Sub task 1+sub task 2+Sub task 3

Can you pls let me know if there is any branching methods/options which I can use here or merging of two automations. If so pls let me know how can we do that.

Thank you so much again for helping me out.

[Christopher Maxwell]

Hi Athira,

Good question - I'm glad you mentioned the branching methods/options. 

This will require two automations. The first automation will run, perhaps manually, on the Epic to create the associated Stories. The key will be to add something to this first automation which can be a trigger for the second automation, which will then create the subtasks. You could add a custom field to the issue which is called "CBA" (Created by Automation) and when the first automation runs, enter the text "yes" into the CBA field. The second automation can be run automatically, watching any newly created Story to see if text "yes" exists in the CBA field. If so, it will then create the subtasks.

Let me know if you have any follow-on questions. I don't have time right now to mock this up in my test instance, but I should later on!

[Christopher Maxwell]

Hi Athira,

One more thing.

I saw your comment and screenshot about a sub-task being created under the epic.

When you are creating your automation, make sure in the "then" section that it is to create a new issue. Select issue type of "story". 

In the field "choose fields to set" make sure to choose Epic Link and "copy from trigger issue". This will associate the newly created Story to the Epic.

[Tracy Parish]

@Trudy Claspill your solution above (Jan 25th) helped me so much.  I have been searching and searching for this solution.  I was able to create Epic>Story>Sub-tasks>Story>subtasks...etc.

I was hoping for Epic>Story>Task>Subtask, but your solution is great and I think I might have been over complicating anyway.

Thanks for the assistance.