Roll up hours from Subtask to the Theme level.

BenWade
Contributor
February 21, 2024
  1. Hi everyone,

    could someone help me to automate this. 

    Jira already calculates the 'sum' of the time logs of the sub-tasks of a user story and saves that in the 'Σ Time Spent' field of the parent user story. However, I have a custom hierarchy which looks like this:

 

  1. Theme
  2.  Initiative
  3.   Epic
  4.   Story
  5.   Task/Bug
  6. Subtask

     

Can someone maybe guide me how to achieve this?

 

#jirapremium #jiracloud

 

 

 

3 answers

2 accepted

1 vote
Answer accepted
Amay Purohit_RVS
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February 22, 2024

Hi @BenWade 

As suggested by others a custom solution can help you roll up time spent at each parent level. If you would like to try out a mktplace app for your requirement, please take a look at an add-one have developed for the same use case.

Issue Hierarchy 

The app rolls up the time spent / story points progress at each parent level. You can add it as a dashboard gadget and export the data to a csv too.

Disclaimer : I am part of the team which developed this app

Links Hierarchy Initiative - Summary Report.PNG

BenWade
Contributor
March 28, 2024

It won't sum up hours. What am I doing wrong?
image.png

Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira
Atlassian Partner
March 28, 2024

Hi @BenWade

jumping in here as I see you have JXL running. What you want to do here is configure a different sum-up style. To do so, hover over the cell header, press the (More) button, and choose "Edit sum-up style". In the dialog that follows, pick the sum up style you're looking for (I assume Sum?):

Screenshot 2024-03-28 at 16.28.37.png

Does this work?

Please note that the Σ Time spent field is already summed up in Jira (although unfortunately in a somewhat unintuitive way), which is why the default sum up style is "None" here. We typically recommend to just use the Time spent field instead and utilise JXL's sum up capabilities.

If there are any further questions, may I ask you to reach out to us via https://support.jxl.app so that we can look into it in more detail?

Many thanks,

- Hannes

 

BenWade
Contributor
March 28, 2024

It does not work. 
image.png

Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira
Atlassian Partner
March 28, 2024

Hi @BenWade

apologies, I feel I didn't yet fully understand what you're aiming for. Am I correct that you want to get the sum up for your Theme level (i.e., BI-602), or perhaps for all levels of your hierarchy? 

If so, you can change your structure to include sum-up levels for every hierarchy level that you're interested in, like e.g. so:

Screenshot 2024-03-28 at 16.42.11.png

With the sum-up style configured to Sum, you should now get something similar to this:

time-estimate-sum-up.gif

Does this look about right?

Thanks, 

- H

BenWade
Contributor
March 29, 2024

This is my custom issue hierarchy. I want to roll up hours from subtask to Theme level. Hours can be logged at any level. I need to see total logged hours  for child issues under their respective themes themes. I still cannot achieve it. 
image.png

BenWade
Contributor
March 29, 2024

@Amay Purohit_RVS 

Links Hierarchy works like a charm. This is exactly what I wanted. Thank you

Like Amay Purohit_RVS likes this
1 vote
Answer accepted
Trudy Claspill
Community Leader
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February 21, 2024

Hello @BenWade 

Do you log time at any level other than subtask?

What event do you want to use to trigger the sum up? Does it need to be done each time work is logged, or would it be acceptable to do the sum up once a day (or on another schedule)?

Do you need to sum the information at each level, or do you just want the grand total in the Theme?

BenWade
Contributor
February 21, 2024

Hi @Trudy Claspill 
1. time can be logged at any level.
2. sum up once a day is perfectly fine.
3. to sum up logged hpurs at each level.

I think this discussion can also be useful for you to look to help me with this automation flow.
Solved: How to use automation to sum up in EPIC the hours ... (atlassian.com)

especially this part:
image.png

 

This is how my hierarchy looks like:

msedge_7YpyZCJ95A.gif

Trudy Claspill
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
February 21, 2024

Rolling up time spent is going to be tricky when work logs can be deleted and edited, and work can be logged both in the children and the parent issues.

For another perspective on a solution (in addition to some vendors suggesting their apps) look at my and other answers on this post.

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Software-questions/how-to-show-total-tracking-time-of-all-tasks-in-Epic/qaq-p/2362843

In that post I suggested using an automation that is triggered by work being logged, and executing a Log Work action to log the same amount of time against the parent issue. That doesn't accommodate work logs being changed or deleted.

Another possibility I just thought of would avoid the use of the Log Work actions and messing with deleting work logs at the parent issue level. But I haven't thought it through completely. My half-formed idea would involve using a separate custom field at each level for storying the sum of work logged one level down plus work logged at the current level. If you ran such a rule on a schedule then you could use the Lookup Issues action to collect all the descendant issues at all levels below a given issue, use a smart value to get the sum of the Time spent fields for all those issues, and then add that to the sum of Time spent for the "parent" issue and record it in the separate field. Regardless of whether work logs were deleted, added, or modified, this once a day calculation would get the sums based on all the work log info that exists for the issues.

Again, I haven't fully thought that through. I'm just brainstorming.

And there is not a native "duration" type of custom field, so the data would be a raw value that you would need to convert to minutes/hours/days/weeks/months as you deemed necessary.

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BenWade
Contributor
February 21, 2024

Why isn't there a pre-built solution in Jira for this? Is there a valid reason for it? I need to find a way to explain to management why it's not possible to generate roll-ups from the lowest to the highest level.

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Trudy Claspill
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
February 21, 2024

I have no insights into Atlassian's product design and enhancement decisions.

If they had not built the capability into the product originally, and vendors subsequently created apps that can provide the function, then Atlassian may be focussing their efforts on other enhancements that aren't covered by vendor apps.

0 votes
Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira
Atlassian Partner
February 21, 2024

Hi @BenWade

depending on your exact use case, you may also want to consider views that calculate these roll ups "on the fly", based on your configured hierarchy.

I was thinking that this may be possible in Advanced Roadmaps, but from a first look at it, it looks like the time spent field isn't available there. (I may be overlooking something, though.)

This being said, if you're open to solutions from the Atlassian Marketplace, there are various sum-up/roll-up apps available there. E.g., my team and I work on an app that may be a great fit for your use case, JXL for Jira.

This is how it looks in action:

time-spent-in-hierarchy.gif

(Note how the sum-up updates as we enter values at the issues.)

JXL is a full-fledged spreadsheet/table view for your issues that allows viewing, inline-editing, sorting, and filtering by all your issue fields, much like you’d do in e.g. Excel or Google Sheets. It also comes with a number of advanced features, including support for (configurable) issue hierarchies, issue grouping by any issue field(s), sum-ups, or conditional formatting.

Any questions just let me know,

Best,

Hannes

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