Roll up original estimate to Initiative
Asked by Stacey Telford:

Hi again,

I have reviewed a bunch of already asked questions on this matter and also tried out the AI, but I still can't get it to work. What I would like to happen is task original estimate rolls up to epic and then epics roll up to initiative (which we have renamed to Objective).

The set up we have is this:

Project 1 (with epics and tasks only)

Project 2 (with epics and tasks only)

Project 3 (with epics and tasks only)

Project 4 (with epics and tasks only)

Objective/Initiative Project (with the Objective issue types only)

Master Project (using filter to bring in P1-4 to have multiple projects in the one sprint)

Automation already working:

Create an epic and automatically create 7 tasks with specific original estimates

Task original estimates roll up to Epic

When task original estimates are changed, Epic is updated

What I'm trying to do:

1. When an Objective is added at the parent of an epic, sum up all epics (which may be across multiple projects) and update the Objective Original Estimate

2. When original estimates are changed in task then Epic, update original estimate in Objective.

We are on premium, however, I wasn't having a good time trying to get Plans to work so I'm setting up Big Picture at the moment.

Any help or advice would be amazing. Thank you!

(screenshots are how/where we're assigning the Objective in the Epic)

![Screenshot 2024-05-13 at 9.49.42?am.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/323209i640819F9C7B8D9F1/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "Screenshot 2024-05-13 at 9.49.42?am.png")![Screenshot 2024-05-13 at 9.50.02?am.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/323210i65C2482F51C91819/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "Screenshot 2024-05-13 at 9.50.02?am.png")


Answers:
author: Bill Sheboy
body: Hi [@Stacey Telford](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/5163487)

For a question like this, please post an image of your complete automation rule, images of any relevant actions / conditions / branches, an image of the audit log details showing the rule execution, and explain what is not working as expected. Those will provide context for the community to offer ideas. Thanks!

Until we see those, and my apologies for the long answer...

Your scenario has a lot of moving parts and will need several rules to solve it using automation. You may want to pause to understand why Advanced Planning or something like Big Picture did not help. Learning that may clarify how to solve your scenario with those purpose-built tools for larger scale planning. Perhaps reach out to the marketplace vendor for ideas.

Regarding automation approaches, and at a high-level:

* Your rules span multiple issue hierarchy levels. You note being on a Jira Premium license level, and so rule usage may be less of a concern; I recommend creating separate rules for each hierarchy-pair level rather than trying to merge rules. For example:
  * one rule detects Story / Task / Bug changes to update their Epic parent
  * one rule detects Epic changes to update their Objective parent
  * etc.
* Some of your sums span different projects, and so those automation rules will need to be global or multiple-project in scope. Your Jira Site Admin will need to create those rules in the global administration area.
* Some of your rules may lead to triggering other rules. For example, a person changes a Story's estimate, which triggers an update to an Epic sum, which then triggers a different rule to update an Objective sum. For these cases, the "Allow Rule Trigger" option is enabled in the next rule in the chain. Please note well: if your rules trigger too much chained execution, [they could exceed the looping limit and halt rule execution](https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/automation-service-limits/). Please discuss with your Jira Site Admin to learn more.

For some specifics, I recommend pausing to identify the level of accuracy you want for these estimation sums: what and when / frequency of update. There are many normal and edge cases to consider...and then decide how you want to handle them (i.e., perhaps with additional rules):

* person creates new Story with an Epic parent
* person changes estimate in a Story with an Epic parent
* person sets the Epic parent for a Story that did not have one previously
* person removes a Story from an Epic parent
* person changes the Epic parent for a Story to a new Epic
* person deletes a Story from Jira with an Epic parent (if you have not disabled issue delete in your site)
* person manually overrides the sum in an Epic
* repeat all of the above, except for the Epic -\> Objective relationships
* investigate if any existing automation rules can do the above actions

Kind regards,  
Bill


author: Ajay _view26_
body: Hi [@Stacey Telford](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/5163487) ,

One way to achieve rolling up the original estimate would be to use Jira Automation rule ..

comments: author: Stacey Telford
body: Thanks [@Ajay _view26_](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/139880) , that's what I'm asking for assistance with, how to set up those two specific Jira Automations, have I not posted in the right forum?


author: Mauricio Heberle
body: [@Stacey Telford](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/5163487) Could you please share a print screen of your rules? Thanks


Tags: jira