Advanced usage
Power features beyond a simple template: template hierarchies, issue security inheritance, smart values for dates and users, and reusable variables.
When you need advanced features
Most teams start with simple templates and only graduate to advanced features once a clear need emerges. The advanced surface area is opt-in: a simple template stays simple unless you ask for more.
The four advanced building blocks are template hierarchies, issue security control, smart values, and reusable variables. Each addresses a specific scaling pattern.
Template hierarchies
A single template can hold an Epic with its Stories and sub-tasks. Launching it creates the entire tree at once, the parent and every child, with the links between them preserved. This collapses the most common “set up the next sprint” or “stand up an incident-response structure” workflow from a morning of clicking into a single action.
Every generated issue is a real, natively-indexed Jira ticket, so it shows up in JQL searches, dashboards and reports like any other. You can find every issue a template produced with the templateKey JQL field.
Detailed walkthrough: creating issues from templates.
Issue security control
Templates respect Jira’s issue security scheme. You can:
- Keep the Security Level field unset on the launched ticket, so the project’s default security applies.
- Inherit the security level from the template, so every launched ticket gets the same security level as the template itself.
- Use a security level that protects the template (so only admins can see it) while letting normal users create issues from it.
Detailed walkthrough: issue security.
Smart values
Smart values are short expressions that resolve at create time. They are available on date and user fields, including Assignee, Reporter, Due Date and Creation Date.
Common patterns:
{{ user() }}resolves to the user creating the issue.{{ now() }}resolves to the current date and time.{{ plusDays(now(), 10) }}resolves to ten days from now.
Detailed walkthrough: smart values.
Reusable variables across a template hierarchy
When a template includes sub-tasks, the same variable definition is shared between the parent and every child. The user fills the variable once on the parent issue, and the value propagates to every sub-task automatically.
Useful for:
- Customer name shared across an onboarding Epic and its sub-tasks.
- Environment shared across an Incident report and its child triage tasks.
- Sprint number shared across a sprint-setup Epic and every recurring Story underneath.
Reusable variables are configured in the variable editor by setting the variable type to Reusable and pointing it at the source variable on the parent.
Where to go next
- Smart values reference with the full expression library.
- Issue security configuration for protected templates.
- JQL searches with templates to find and report on issues created from a template.
- Jira Automation integration for hands-free template launches on events.
Ready to template your Jira?
Install Process Templates for Jira on the Atlassian Marketplace. Free up to 10 users.