Automation for the Epic child tasks/subtasks
Asked by Elif Alverson:

Hello,

I am working on an automation whenever the epic's category custom field changes ; all the child task's and subtasks category field changes accordingly.

Secondly, is it possible to run this automation on specific times during the day?

Here are the screen shots of the automation below. Even the audit log states success, nothing happens. No changes on the child issues. Any help will be appreciated.

![Screenshot 2023-08-02 at 3.28.35 PM.png](/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/272820i2721645A06336AB9/image-dimensions/147x213?v=v2 "Screenshot 2023-08-02 at 3.28.35 PM.png")![Screenshot 2023-08-02 at 3.28.42 PM.png](/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/272821iD71D1B1A2F2FC538/image-dimensions/106x128?v=v2 "Screenshot 2023-08-02 at 3.28.42 PM.png")![Screenshot 2023-08-02 at 3.28.51 PM.png](/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/272822i7FDE06B2E63A1D29/image-dimensions/181x69?v=v2 "Screenshot 2023-08-02 at 3.28.51 PM.png")![Screenshot 2023-08-02 at 3.27.48 PM.png](/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/272819iA9590BEE22CC3D36/image-dimensions/124x52?v=v2 "Screenshot 2023-08-02 at 3.27.48 PM.png")


Answers:
author: Trudy Claspill
body: Hello [@Elif Alverson](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4707500)

I believe you need to choose Copy From Epic rather than Copy from Parent to copy the value from the Epic to the Child Issues found by the **For: Stories** branch.

You could set up a second rule to be triggered on the change of Category for the Stories, and add a similar branch to update the subtasks of the story issue.

I'm not sure if it is possible to build one rule that would handle the updates of both the Epic's child issues and the child issues' subtasks. I haven't tried to do that myself.

comments: author: Elif Alverson
body: [@Trudy Claspill](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/3569011) , I changed it to " Copy From Epic " and the result is the same. Category field is still empty for the tasks associated with the epic.

Any other suggestions?

The category field is interactive which means you can add a new value as the category. It is not a default custom field with specific values. Is that the reason?

![Screenshot 2023-08-04 at 12.57.49 PM.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/273334i844EB74C6042D6E3/image-dimensions/303x107?v=v2 "Screenshot 2023-08-04 at 12.57.49 PM.png")![Screenshot 2023-08-04 at 12.57.41 PM.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/273335i4B987844D0794CA1/image-dimensions/301x131?v=v2 "Screenshot 2023-08-04 at 12.57.41 PM.png")


author: Trudy Claspill
body: Is this using the built-in Category field or another custom field you created and named Category? I ask because I have only the built-in Category field, and I am not able to select that field in the Edit action. I tried in both a Company Managed and Team Managed Work Management project. So I wonder how you were able to do that.


author: Elif Alverson
body: [@Trudy Claspill](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/3569011) , you have a great point. We have two category fields one if a checkbox with specific values.

The other is a pop up window shared by multiple projects and any value can be added. The pop up one is the one needs to be used in this automation.

![Screenshot 2023-08-04 at 1.51.13 PM.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/273354i70C1FE30A37CE994/image-dimensions/445x81?v=v2 "Screenshot 2023-08-04 at 1.51.13 PM.png")


author: Trudy Claspill
body: First, it is a bad practice to have multiple custom fields with identical names. This can lead to unexpected behavior and "confusion" when trying to use the fields by name because Jira is may be unsure which field you actually want to use.

I strongly encourage you to consider changing the name of the Category (checkboxes) field that was created. You should do some investigation first to find out where it was used, looking for filters and automations, to ensure you mitigate impact of the change.

The **Category(locked)** field is the built-in field used by Work Management projects.

That field is not available from the field list in the Edit action in Automation rules. The lack of truly successful editing in your rule is due to the Edit action operating against the Category(checkboxes) field instead of the Category(locked) field.

The only way to edit the Category(locked) field is to use the More Options feature and edit it using Advanced Editing with JSON.

<https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/advanced-field-editing-using-json/>

This is more complicated because your intent is to copy values from one issue into another.

There are lots of posts about using JSON to edit fields, but I don't happen to know of one specifically for *copying* the Category field.

In this post I provided an answer about simply setting the Category field.

<https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Work-Management-Questions/How-to-set-issue-category-in-automation/qaq-p/2268300>

I haven't worked out the details, but probably you would have to store the field value from the parent into a Variable, and then use that Variable to set the field in the child.


author: Elif Alverson
body: [@Trudy Claspill](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/3569011) , I definitely agree with you. The reason we have two "category" fields is; we started to use JWM project for the last couple of months and did not realize this project type comes with the Category field until lately. I will change the category multi-select field's name. However did you know Atlassian has another system field called category for the project types?

Thank you for all these documentations you provided. I will check them out. Have a great weekend.


author: Trudy Claspill
body: Yes, I am aware that Atlassian has a Category field at the project level. That field is not in the Custom Fields list and would not be available for editing in Automation when you use the Edit Issue action.


author: Elif Alverson
body: [@Trudy Claspill](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/3569011) , if that category field could have been used as a condition for our automations, we would be set.


author: Trudy Claspill
body: There are a small number of Project-level attributes you can access in a rule, apparently only for the issue that triggered the rule. Project Category is not one of them.

<https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/jira-smart-values-projects/>


author: Elif Alverson
body: Thank you.


Tags: automation

cloud

custom-field

epic

jira-work-management-cloud

sub-task

task