How to automate changing the sprint of blocked issues when the blocking issue's sprint changes?

[Jade Dang]

I'm using the Plan Timeline to visualize dependencies for tasks planned for the quarter. We are linking dependent tasks and pre-populating them into the upcoming quarter's sprints where we think the work will start. We have hundreds of tasks, and would like to automate the sprint assignment of blocked tasks to be updated to match the delta of the change in the blocking task's sprint assignment.

For example

Task A blocks Task B; Task B blocks Task C.
Task A is assigned to Sprint 1; Task B is assigned to Sprint 2; Task C is assigned to Sprint 3.

When Task A gets pushed from Sprint 1 to TWO sprints out (to Sprint 3), I would like the linked tasks that Task A blocks to be automatically moved TWO sprints out from their current sprint assignments too. In other words, Task B will be moved to Sprint 4 and Task C will be moved to sprint 5. 

I tried to play around with the automation options, but the closest I could come was below. It only lets me choose the next sprint and that's not exactly what I want. I want to maintain the sprint assignments for the linked issues, just bumped according to the blocking ticket's sprint change.

Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

[Bill Sheboy · Accepted solution]

Hi @Jade Dang -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

First things first: if you actually have hundreds of tasks in this situation and want to cascade update them, that is not possible with an automation rule. 

The reason is such rules are often recursive, triggering themselves for cascading changes.  There is a 10 loop limit for rules triggering other rules, and so your rules could halt due to violating several service limits: https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/automation-service-limits/

If we assume there are less than 10 loops, your rule cannot use the dropdown list to do what you asked.  Instead you could use a smart value to directly enter the sprint's id...that is the easy part.  The more difficult parts for your scenario will be identifying:

1. how many sprints to push out (i.e., increment)
2. finding the correct sprint

#1 is easier if you have a standard naming convention for sprints, such as with a number for date field that may be incremented.  If not, you will need to use a Lookup Table, and actively update it in the rule as sprints are changed.

#2 might be done by calling the REST API to find all sprints, using the Send Web Request action, and then matching to your incremented / selected one.

Kind regards,
Bill

[Jade Dang]

Thanks @Bill Sheboy for your response. I'm relatively new to using smart values and the Send Web Request action that you mentioned. Will do some more research on those and try it out. If you have any examples to help give me some clues, I'd greatly appreciate it! Will also revert back if I ever get this working!

[Bill Sheboy]

Here is a how-to article for calling the Jira REST API endpoints using the Send Web Request action: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-articles/Automation-for-Jira-Send-web-request-using-Jira-REST-API/ba-p/1443828