Why I'm unable to clone issues in Jira

[Fredrick Langston]

I want to clone an Epic that I have stories I created with in it as 'Issues in epic' but when I select Clone and choose the option to also 'Clone links' only Issue Links are cloned. For example:

Child of - Clone appear

Parent of - Clone appear

but 

Issues in epic - Clone don't appear

How can I resolve this issue?

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @Fredrick Langston 

What version of the Jira product are you using?

Can you provide a screen image of the Clone dialog you see?

When you select "clone links" are you actually ending up with clones of the issue linked to the original epic, or are you just getting links to those same issues in your newly created epic?

Jira does not natively support the ability to clone both an Epic and all its child issues. And in the native Clone functionality when you select the Clone Links what you end up with in the new issue is links to the same issues that were linked to the original issue.

Clone Links is about cloning links to the issues in the Linked issues section, not cloning the child issues of the Epic.

To clone the Epic and all its children you need to use an add-on. You can find add-ons that provide that functionality in the Atlassian Marketplace. Here is a sample search:

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/search?hosting=server&product=jira&query=clone%20issue

[Fredrick Langston]

This was very helpful. I don't think I'll be able to get another add-on approved. Do you know if there's a way I can do this with maybe Jira Automation or ScriptRunner?

[Trudy Claspill]

You can find additional posts on this topic by searching the internet:

https://www.google.com/search?q=jira+cloud+automation+clone+epic+and+children&oq=jira+cloud+automation+clone+epic+and+children&aqs=chrome..69i57.10073j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

That returned a link to this post, which purports to have a solution:

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Software-questions/How-to-clone-Epic-with-children-by-using-automation-rule/qaq-p/1819811

[Fredrick Langston]

@Trudy Claspill Great example but I'm using Jira server so I don't have the Clone variable option. Thanks