A Parent status calculated custom field type represents the status of the issue's parent issue, if any, and is displayed as a String representing the status name.

Adding a Parent Status custom field

To add a Parent Status custom field to your instance:

  1. Log in to JIRA as an administrator.
  2. Go to the Administration icon  and click on it.
  3. Click on Issues - > Custom fields.
  4. Click on Add custom field.
  5. Click on Advanced in the left panel.
  6. Locate Parent Status Field and select it.
  7. Click on Next.
  8. Provide a name for the custom field
  9. You can optionally provide a description of the custom field.
  10. Click on Create
  11. Associate the custom field to the appropriate screens.
  12. Locate the custom field in the Custom fields administration page and click on the cog wheel.
  13. Click on Configure to create multiple contexts if you need to make this field apply only to particular projects or issue types.
  14. Perform a re-index as prompted by JIRA.

Search template

When creating a Parent Status custom field type, you can configure the Search template as Free text searcher or Exact text searcher (Statistics-compatible) to be able to search issues either with a free text or the exact text for that custom field value. The Exact text searcher (Statistics-compatible) searcher allows calculated text fields to be used in statistics gadgets. If you select None for the searcher, then you won’t see any reference to this field in the Issue Navigator search fields. Note that changing a custom field searcher requires a re-index.

Note that this field will not always reflect the status of the parent accurately in the search index, because when the parent issue's status changes, the sub-task is not re-indexed and thus its calculated fields are not updated in the index. However, the value will always be accurate on the View Issue screen.

Customizing the display of the Parent Status custom field type value

You can define a velocity template that will return the Html representation of the calculated custom field. Leave it empty to use the default template. 

To select a format for a Parent Status custom field type value:

  1. Locate the custom field on the Custom Fields administration page.
  2. Click on the cog wheel and click on Configure
  3. Click on Edit Velocity Template.
  4. Input the template.
  5. Click on Save.

You can use the following Velocity variables in the template:

  • $value: the raw field value, a String
  • $formattedValue: a String formatted using the status macro, 
  • and other variables described on this page

For example:

<font color="red">
    $formattedValue
</font>

Displaying the Parent status custom field type on Transition and Edit screen

The Never show on Transition and Edit screens option controls whether the Parent status custom field can appear on transition and edit screens. If you select this option, the field will not be visible on any Edit or Transition screen, even if it is added to the screen.

Accessing the Parent status custom field value from other Groovy scripts

You can access this field using any of the following getters of the Issue interface