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Subproject tasks in parent project backlog
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Description

We have projects that look a bit like this:

  • Foobar shared core
  • Foobar Android app
  • Foobar iOS app
  • Foobar desktop app
  • Servers and Infrastructure
  • Website

These are large enough projects to deserve their own tag, but as a team working on Foobar stuff we have a single meeting and a single schedule/workboard. We looked at subprojects and were hoping to be able to assign tasks to e.g. "Foobar Android app" and then have it automatically show up in a parent "Foobar" project that we can use for workboards.

While we're able to assign tasks to a milestone in the workboard of this "Foobar" umbrella project, we don't seem to be able to automatically adopt the tasks from its subprojects. This means that for each task we have to assign it to two projects. That in turn requires either attentive users or a Herald rule, plus we have to add a user to both their subproject(s) and the "Foobar" workboard project (which is now unrelated to the more specialized projects).

I was wondering if you have any solution in mind for this. Here are a few to come to mind:

  • Projects are not meant to "inherit" the tasks of their subprojects, use workarounds and leave it at that.
  • Propagate tasks to the parent project if the workboard is disabled / hasn't been created for a subproject.
  • Make it possible to add "subproject columns" in the parent's workboard, or maybe generalized "query columns". If a queried task hasn't been assigned to another column/milestone, show it in there.
  • Provide a setting in the Backlog column's dropdown menu to allow selecting which subprojects' tasks to include.

Event Timeline

Make it possible to add "subproject columns" in the parent's workboard

I currently plan to add these, they're just complicated because they mean a card may appear in multiple places on the workboard. See T10349 for discussion.

I'm going to merge this into T11036, which specifically describes subproject columns.