Would like Epic Status to change based on story's status

[Richard Silber]

I have 5 columns in my board: To Do, In Progress, In Review, Blocked and Done. I'd like the Epic's status to be:

• To Do if all stories have a status = "To Do"
• In Progres if some some stories have a status of either "In Progress" or "In Review"
• Blocked if any story has a status = "Blocked"
• Done if all stories have a status = "Done"

I can't figure out why the rule doesn't work. The Epic I'm testing with has 2 stories - #1 is Done and #2 I'm testing with. I'd expect the Epic status to change to In Progress if I move story #2 to In Progress or In Review but the Epic status says To Do. Same if I move it to Blocked.

What am I missing?

My rule is as follows:

[wwalser · Accepted solution]

The audit log should make what's happening in this rule fairly clear. Check out this document for more tools for debugging rules: https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/debug-a-rule/.

Once an epic fails to match the first if statement, the rule stops executing and no more of the actions or conditions are checked. These are not nested if else conditions. These are "if this is true, continue executing. Otherwise, stop executing."

We do have support for if/else style condition blocks. However, some bad news. We only support one level of nesting. This use case demonstrates a shortcoming in current automation. One that we will eventually get rid of, it's on our list of things to do, but we don't currently have it scheduled as there is more critical work going on at the moment.

Branches create a "nested" rule execution. See here:

Similarly, if else blocks also create a nesting. See again:

This ability to nest provides visual clarity, but it also has meaning about how the rule executes.

So, how do we solve your use case. I believe the answer is using multiple branches. It's not as elegant, but it'll get the job done.

Hope this helps.

Wes