Change Management Tasks

[Nicholas]

Hi there!

I was hoping someone would have some suggestions for an implementation of change management within Jira Service Management, specifically related to sub-tasks.

The issue I face at the moment is that in any change request I create (with key CH), each sub-task of the change is also labelled CH, e.g., CH-2, CH-3, which is not ideal for reporting purposes. 

I have read other forum posts indicating separate keys for sub-tasks are not possible, and I have tried apps, such as https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1216451/smart-checklist-for-jira-pro?tab=overview&hosting=cloud, which provide checklists. 

This does work in some cases; however, I am unable to update (or update in a non-janky manner) individual checklist items (assignee, status) using Jira Automation and the REST API. 

Does anyone have any suggestions on handling sub-tasks within Jira Service Management's Change Management in a way that won't increment the issue key and will allow for easy modification of individual tasks within Jira Automation / REST API?

I really appreciate any help you can provide.

Thanks!
Nicholas

[Olena Brazhko_Railsware_]

Hi @Nicholas 

That's great to hear you are using Smart Checklist!

We would be happy to investigate your case further and see how Smart Checklist can be used to meet your needs so that you do not overcomplicate the flow with additional add-ons.

For this, we would like to see examples of the cases that you cannot implement to understand your use cases more. 

Feel free to reach out to our Support team directly by filling in the form here.

Best,

Olena from the Smart Checklist team

[Nicholas]

Hi Olena,

Thanks for reaching out! I will attempt to explain an example of my use case.

My organization is considering redesigning some of our business processes to implement more automated tasks for change requests rather than having a technician perform these tasks manually. 

For this, some automation runs as a script on an isolated server. Once this script is run, it will use the Jira Cloud REST API to modify the task by changing its status, providing a description of the task's logs, and filling in custom fields depending on the task's outcome. 

As far as I am aware, with Smart Checklist, you can only retrieve the entire checklist, and it comes in the following format (newlines omitted due to comment restrictions):

"- ToDo List+ Checkedx Skipped~ In Progress" 

This is less than ideal, as I will have to extract information with regular expressions and send a request to update the entire checklist to update a singular item. Aside from the hassle of doing this through scripting, it does not allow us to provide additional information, such as custom fields.

I hope this clarifies. Please let me know if this is possible within Smart Checklist or if you have any other suggestions.

Thanks!
Nicholas

[Olena Brazhko_Railsware_]

Hi @Nicholas 

Thank you for sharing your use case with us.

You are right, Smart Checklist allows to extract the whole checklist only for other operations as its data is stored in one custom field.

To accomplish what you are describing, we would need to address a specific item ID separately through the API. Currently, it is indeed not possible but we are reviewing such a possibility internally now.

Pity, we are of little help this time. We'll keep you in the loop for the updates on this matter.

If you have any additional questions you would like to discuss -- we are always happy to chat more.

Best regards,

Olena

[Nicholas]

Hi Olena,

Thank you! It would be great to see a feature like this implemented.

Best,

Nicholas

[Brant Schroeder]

@Nicholas Welcome to the Atlassian community

Every issue / sub-task in Jira / JSM receives an issue key because they are all individual issues in Jira. 

Can you explain the business process that you have developed for change control, specifically the steps.  This would help provide some context where we can make a recommendation to help you use the JSM tool to meet your needs based on how the application functions.     

[Nicholas]

Hi Brant,

Our organization follows the ITIL framework for change management. Depending on the type of change, e.g., recurring, regular or emergency, there will be a series of approvals from managers and CAB. For example, a change related to upgrading a group of servers would require tasks from different system admins to perform different functions. We are not fond of sub-tasks taking on that "CH" key, as it can get confusing for those who are not as familiar with Jira. 

The following is an example of fields used in our changes:

We are currently exploring the use of automation and AI to help streamline our business processes, some of which include automating several tasks within a change, which is why API use is very important to us. The idea would be to combine the power of Jira Automation and the REST API to automate tasks within a specific change. The following is an example of a workflow for a change:

Thanks!
Nicholas

[Brant Schroeder]

@Nicholas welcome to the Atlassian community

Thanks for sharing all of that makes sense.  Once again sub-tasks are issues so they will always have in issue ID and you will not be able to change that.  Do all the users who are approving the change at different parts of the approval process have access as an agent?  The reason I ask is sub-tasks in JSM are for internal work and function different the a standard issue that has a request type associated with it.  For instance if you have a workflow where you want a specific individual to approve a portion of that request JSM can send an email prompting approval and then using that individuals account validate that they are the one making the approval.  This functionality is not available on sub-tasks via customer notifications and only agents would be able to approve.  

[Nicholas]

Yes, all approvers, including those in CAB, will have user access.

[Wojciech Wardaszko _HeroCoders_]

@Nicholas 

You might want to give our Checklist for Jira (Free, Pro or Enterprise) a try.

When you enable a global option to sync checklist data with Jira custom fields, editing a human-readable field Checklist Text updates the checklist.

The field follows this format (added smart values to show how it works with Automation):

# Checklist name

* [] incomplete item with assignee mentioned @{{issue.assignee.accountId}}

* [x] complete item with a due date in 5 days {{now.plusDays(5).jiraDate}}

>> additional description of the item above

--- Section title

* []  another item with a smart link to parent issue {{issue.parent.key}}

This should meet your requirements nicely. If you have any additional questions, let me know.

Cheers!

[Nicholas]

Hi Wojciech,

Thank you for your suggestion. I have also looked at your app; however, the same issue is present. 

My use case relies on retrieving all checklist items as individual objects via the REST API so that each can be viewed and modified independently, with its own assignee, status, and custom fields. 

If I understand your documentation correctly, I can only retrieve the entire checklist in raw markdown format and modify the entire checklist string. This makes it difficult for me to isolate the checklist items. 

Does your app have a way to, for instance, send a PUT request via the Jira Cloud API to change a single checklist item without having to reformat the entire checklist markdown string to change a single checklist item? 

I like this about Jira's built-in subtasks, as I can provide a JQL query to retrieve each subtask as a JSON object and send a PUT request to update one subtask by its ID. 

I hope this clarifies, and thanks!
Nicholas