Updating due date on a parent & epic from its subtasks

[Giorgio Rivolta]

Hello there,

I am currently having my own structure of issues which looks like above:

|-Epic
|--- Level 1 (type of Task)
|------ Level 2 (type of subtask)

When the due date is changed in the Level 2 I need that the Parent (Level 1), update it's due date and consequently the Epic will update it's due date too.

I've already saw the thread "https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-questions/Updating-start-and-due-date-on-a-parent-from-its-subtasks/qaq-p/1776092" but I think is something simpler in my case. I should group by the due date of the level 2 subtasks and update the Level 1 with the last due date that I have in the Level 2.

Then group by the due date of level 1 and update the Epic with the last due date that I found.

It's possible? Can you help me on how to do it?

I've read this:

• https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/guides/expand-jira/automation
• https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/automation-template-library#/
• https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Automation-articles/Jira-Automation-all-the-resources-you-need-in-one-page/ba-p/1388465

But I cannot undrstand how to perform the "lookup":

• action: lookup issues with JQL to find all Level 3 issues with the same parent as the trigger issue, ordered by the Start Date ascending

Can you give me the right JQL Syntax?

Best Regards,

Giorgio

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Giorgio Rivolta -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

What have you tried thus far to solve this need?

If you have an automation rule which is not working as expected, please provide the following so the community can offer better suggestions:

• what type of project is this (e.g., company-managed, team-managed, etc.), 
• an image of your complete automation rule,
• images of any relevant actions / conditions / branches,
• an image of the audit log details showing the rule execution, and
• explain what is not working as expected.

If you have not yet started a rule, I encourage you to try to do so.

The Lookup Issues action finds the issues matching the JQL criteria provided: https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/jira-automation-actions/#Lookup-issues

The specific JQL needed depends upon your rule trigger / syntax.  The ORDER BY of Start Date is not needed for this case, as you may find the maximum due date from the lookup results with this: {{lookupIssues.duedate.max}} 

Please look here to learn more about writing JQL expressions: https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/search-for-issues-in-jira/

I recommend pausing to consider how much accuracy you need for this field, as that will determine how many rules are needed and what their triggers should be.  Some example cases are:

• when the Due Date changes for a Sub-task, update its parent Task and grandparent Epic
• when a Sub-task is added to a Task with a Due Date...
• when a Sub-task is removed from a Task...
• when a Task is added to an Epic
• when a Task is removed from an Epic
• when a Task is moved to a different parent Epic...
• when someone manually changes the Due Date in an Epic which has child Tasks
• when someone manually changes the Due Date in a Task which has child Sub-tasks
• ...

Kind regards,
Bill