How do I list all child issues from parent ticket criteria?
Asked by Bea Tea:

I want to list all initiatives that are child tickets to custom Theme issue type in our org. Can you help with a query for this?

- Themes contain a drop down field for areas

- From these themes, I want a list of all the initiatives


Answers:
author: mauricio.groth
body: **Hi [@Bea Tea](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4866026)**

I'm Maur?cio, a support engineer at Appfire and I'm here to help you.

Unfortunately, using JQL of Jira, you'll not be able to do it dynamically.

In the app where my team works, [JQL Search Extensions for Jira](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1214791/jql-search-extensions-for-jira-reports?hosting=cloud&tab=overview&utm_source=atlassiancommunity&utm_medium=listinglink&utm_campaign=mauricio), you can use this query to find all initiatives that are children of the Theme issue type:

```
issue in childrenOfIssuesInQuery("type=Theme?)
```

Please contact our [support](https://jqlsearchextensions.atlassian.net/servicedesk/customer/portal/2) if you have any other questions about this query.

We'll be happy to help you!

Best regards,

Maur?cio


author: Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira
body: Hi [@Bea Tea](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4866026)

just to put this out there, another option might be to consider one of the more [hierarchy-focused](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/search?query=hierarchy) apps from the Marketplace. These apps typically have their own ways of figuring out parent/child relationships between issues, and provide more powerful ways of defining and searching through issue hierarchies. I myself work on such an app, in which your use case would be easy to solve - I'll provide more details below.

The advantage here is that you can actually *view* your issues in their hierarchy, which depending on your exact use case, may make things considerably easier.

comments: author: Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira
body: Just to expand on the above, here's how this would look in the app that my team and I are working on, [JXL for Jira](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1224710?hosting=cloud&tab=overview&utm_source=atlassian-community&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=2330476):

![filter-theme.gif](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/252111i102C2FDFE51C95E7/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "filter-theme.gif")

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*. Once a hierarchy is enabled, you can use JXL's search and filter capabilities to narrow your issues down to exactly what you're looking for.

When you've got your issues, you can work on these issues directly in JXL, trigger various operations in Jira, or export your issues with just one click.

Any questions just let me know,

Best,

Hannes


author: Daniel Capizzi
body: Hi [@Bea Tea](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4866026),

Unfortunately this isn't possible with JQL. There is a function called \`portfolioChildIssuesOf()\` which allows you to fetch the children of an issue, however you need to supply specific issue keys to it. It's not possible to say "get me the children of all themes".

We have an open feature request to support nested queries in JQL which would address this use-case. You can vote on the request and track any updates from our side there. <https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-21936>

Cheers,

Daniel


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