Automation For Jira - Writing a rule that updates a parent issue (Initiative) based on an update made to its Child issue (Epic)

Summary

The purpose of this article is to show how to configure a rule meant to update a parent issue (such as a field update, or transition to a new status) when its child issue is updated, in the case the parent/child relationship is based on the hierarchy level configuration, which is a feature from Advanced Roadmap, and which is dictated by the Parent Link field.

It is important to note that the Parent/Child relationship is different from the Parent/Sub-Task relationship which is documented in configuring sub-tasks. The Rule Branches can only be used to search for the Parent of a sub-task, or the Epic a Story is linked to. However, the Rule Branches don't have an option to search for the Parent of an issue when the parent/child relationship is based on Hierarchy Levels.

Implementing such a use case can be a bit tricky, which is why this KB article was written.

Solution

For this solution, we will provide an automation rule that will copy the Priority field of a child issue (Epic) into its parent issue (Initiative) when this field is updated.

We will also assume that the parent/child relationship is configured as below:

• The hierarchy levels are configured so that the Initiative issue type is a parent of the Epic issue type:

  

• With such hierarchy-level configuration, we will have the Parent/Child relationship described in the examples below:

  • The issue SCRUM-55 is a parent issue of the issue SCRUM-25 (as shown in the Child Issues panel):

    

• The issue SCRUM-25 is a child issue of the issue SCRUM-55 (as configured via the Parent Link issue):

  

Rule configuration

The automation rule will be configured like this:

• Add the Field Value Change trigger

  • Fields to monitor for changes: Priority

• Add an Issue fields condition with the following settings:

  • Field: Issue type

  • Condition: Equal

  • Value: Epic

• Add a Branch rule component with the following settings:

  • Un-tick the option Only include issues that have changed since the last time this rule executed

  • Type of related issues: JQL

  • JQL: use the JQL query below:

    1 key in parentIssuesOf("{{triggerIssue.key}}")

• Inside the Branch rule component, add the Edit Issue action with the following settings:

  • Choose Field to Set...

    • Select "Priority"

    • Select "Copy from trigger issue"

The automation rule will look like this: