Fix Orphan Sub-Tasks in Jira Cloud
Platform Notice: Cloud Only - This article only applies to Atlassian apps on the cloud platform.
Summary
Jira's External System Import tool allows the creation of subtasks without a parent. However, after creation, you can't manually link orphan sub-tasks to their parent work items using the Jira UI.
Diagnosis
To quickly identify orphan sub-tasks, use the following JQL query:
type = Sub-task AND parent is EMPTYIf you try to use the Convert to issue option in an orphan sub-task, an error message will appear saying that the issue is not a sub-task.
Cause
This happens when sub-tasks are imported to Jira via CSV and the references to parent work items are not present in the file.
Solution
To resolve this issue, you can import a new CSV file to establish the link between orphan sub-tasks and their parent work items.
Example:
To achieve that, you must Import data from a CSV file, using the following file structure:
IssueKey,IssueType,Summary,IssueId,ParentId
ITMS-48,,,1,
ITSM-49,,,2,
ITSM-47,,,,1
ITSM-46,,,,2In this example, work items ITSM-48 and ITSM-49 are existing parents to which we are assigning the IDs 1 and 2, respectively. ITSM-47 is an orphan sub-task that will become a child of ITSM-48, and ITSM-46 will become a child of ITSM-49.
You can add multiple parents and sub-tasks to the file to fix multiple orphans at a time.
ℹ️ Note: All CSV and Jira fields must be correctly mapped (check the boxes for 'Map field value') for this solution to work.
Once the import is complete, both issues should be correctly associated.
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