Time roll-up through parent or parent-link?

[David Foote]

Hi all,

We are using the issue hierarchy that comes from Advanced Roadmaps, which looks like Objective > Key Result -> Epic -> Story.

The Epic to Story parent/child relationship uses the 'Epic Link' and 'Parent' fields in the background to store the data on the child record. The Objective to Key Result and Key Result to Epic parent/child relationships use the 'Parent Link' and 'Parent' fields to store the data on the child record.

What we are seeing is that the time spent field from the child will only successfully roll up to the aggregate time spent on the parent only when the 'Epic Link' field is populated. It will not roll-up if 'Epic Link' is blank and 'Parent Link' is used.

Does anyone know if we can get the time spent to roll-up to the parent using the 'Parent' field in addition to or instead of the 'Epic Link' field? I know that there are changes coming for all these fields (see Upcoming changes: 'epic-link' replaced with 'parent' ) but we would really rather have that data now rather than possibly sometime in 2023.

Here is an example of what the data looks like for a set of cards that are linked through the hierarchy:

PIPS-1 (Objective)
timespent: 0
aggregate: 0
|
V
PIP-2 (Key Result)
timespent: 5400
aggregate: 5400
epic link: null
parent: PIPS-1
parent link: PIPS-1
|
V
CI-338 (Epic)
timespent: 5400
aggregate: 12600
epic link: null
parent: PIP-2
parent link: PIP-2
|
V
CI-339 (Story)
timespent: 7200
aggregate: 7200
epic link: CI-338
parent: CI-338
parent link: null

Any suggestions would be much appreciated!

[Johanna Pichotka_APTIS_ · Accepted solution]

Hi @David Foote , 

at the moment there is no way to do this in native Jira. If you're open to using a third party app you can try our app Epic Sum Up. 

It supports Advanced Roadmaps and sums up all time values of a hierarchy in a progress bar. Other than time spent this includes original estimate and remaining time as well. It looks like this:

You can trial it for 30 days to see if it is a good fit for you. 

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1213091/epic-sum-up-lean-project-management-for-jira-teams?hosting=cloud&tab=overview

Hope this helps, 

Johanna

[David Foote]

Thanks for confirming that this just isn't possible in native Jira Johanna.

Does your app actually populate the parent records with the aggregate time spent data or does it calculate it on the fly when viewing it, like you show in the screenshot above?

We do a lot of reporting through Tableau so having it on the record is key for us.

[Johanna Pichotka_APTIS_]

Hi David, 

It's true that they are live calculated but I'll check with the developers if there is a way to populate these records. 

I'll discuss it with them at the beginning of next year because most of our team is on Christmas break right now. 

I'll get back to you as soon as I know anything. 

[Johanna Pichotka_APTIS_]

Hi @David Foote, 

first, sorry for the late reply. Start of the year was really busy. 

So I have talked to our developers and at the moment there is no way for us to populate these records, due to the technical limitations we face in the cloud. 

Even if we can't offer this at the moment, there are some Forge apps who can sum up values for all kinds of hierarchies in a custom field. Two of these are: 

Scriptrunner

Smart fields

From what I understand, these custom fields update any time a relevant value is changed but as Forge performance is still being improved it can sometimes be that these changes take a little longer until they're also reflected in the custom field. 

I can still recommend checking these apps to see if they might help you solve your case for now until Atlassian provides a better solution. 

I hope I could help a little with this

Have a great rest of your day 

Johanna

[David Foote]

@Johanna Pichotka_APTIS_ ,

I appreciate your follow up with this!

For the moment, it looks like we will be utilizing a script that will update this values once per day. But I will investigate the apps you provided.

Thanks again!