Copy field value from linked issues

Owned by Radhika Vijji. (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Apr 26, 2023 by Daniel Barrow
3 min read

Are you using JMWE for Cloud and want to learn how to use this post-function? Head to our documentation here.

Documentation for JMWE 6.2.0 is available here.

A workflow post-function that sets the value(s) of a selected field to the value(s) from the same field of an issue linked to the current issue through a selected link type.

This post-function does not work with remote links (links to Jira issues residing on another Jira instance/server).

To add the 'Copy field value from linked issues' post-function to a transition:

  1. Click Edit for the workflow that has the transition you wish to configure the post-function on.
  2. In the Workflow Designer, select the transition.
  3. Click on Post Functions in the properties panel.
  4. Click on Add post function.
  5. Select Copy field value from linked issues from the list of post-functions.
  6. Click on Add to add the post-function on the transition.
  7. Select the field to copy to. Select "Same as Source field" to copy it to the same field.
  8. Select the link from the Issue Link drop-down, or leave it as Any for any link type other than Issue/Subtask, Epic/Story and Jira Portfolio hierarchy
  9. Select the options provided to add required parameters.
  10. Click on Add to add the post-function to the transition.

Related links :

For information on where the post-function needs to be placed on a transition, see Placing post-functions on a transition.

Refer to the Use cases for post-functions page for use cases for this post-function.

When you add this post-function to a transition and trigger the transition, the add-on sets the value(s) of a selected field to the value(s) from the same field of an issue linked to the current issue through the selected link type.

Options 

  • Copy only if not set

Sets the value(s) of the selected field of the current issue, only when the field is empty on the current issue.

  • Ignore empty values

Will not set (clear) the selected field of the current issue, if the value from the linked issues is empty or null.

  • Add source value(s) to destination field

Appends value(s) from the same field of each linked issue to the selected field of the current issue. This is applicable only to multi-valued fields.

  • Create missing value(s)

Allows automatically creating any missing value(s) while copying values that do not exist in the destination issue's project and hence should be created from the source issue's project. This is applicable only to Affects Version/s, Fix Version/s, Single version and Multi-version picker type custom fields, Components, Radio buttons, Checkboxes, Single select and Multi-select list type custom fields.

Conditional execution

To execute this post-function based on the result of a groovy expression see Conditional execution/validation using a Groovy expression.

Note that you can use this function to copy a field from

  • The parent issue of a sub-task by using the built-in is Parent of link type and vice versa using the is subtask of link type
  • The Epic of an issue by using the built-in is Epic of link type and vice-versa using the has Epic of link type.

Error Handling

By default, all errors (Java Exceptions) raised by this post-function, including those raised by custom Groovy scripts, will be logged in the JIRA log file but will not be reported to the user and will not prevent the transition from completing. However, when designing new workflows or troubleshooting them, it is more convenient to be notified immediately of any such error during the execution of the transition. For example on the production Jira instances you might want to show errors only for the post-function(s) being worked on, in order to avoid disrupting other workflows. To make errors raised by the current post-function prevent the transition from completing and show the error in the browser, select Make transition fail when an error occurs in this post-function.

If you want to show all the errors, either only to the admins or to all users, configure the option globally on the JMWE configuration page. For example, on development and staging Jira instances, you can activate error reporting for all JMWE post-functions, to display all the errors and it is recommended to do so, and on production Jira instances you might want to activate error reporting only to administrators so that they can be made aware of configuration errors.

When the option is selected on a post-function, it overrides the configuration on the JMWE configuration page.