Hi ClickUp team and fellow users,

I wanted to weigh in here because I’ve been dealing with this issue extensively in our workspace and I believe it’s important to call this what it really is: not a feature request, but a bug.

ClickUp heavily relies on a task/subtask structure – especially when working with templates, which are a core part of many professional workflows. When an automation is configured to trigger both when a task is created and when a subtask is created, and it still fails to consistently apply to subtasks generated via templates, that’s not a missing feature. That’s a reliability problem.

Even more confusing: sometimes the automation does work on subtasks – other times it doesn’t – even though everything (template, folder, setup) is exactly the same. This inconsistency is what makes it so problematic. Subtasks are, after all, still tasks in ClickUp. They're treated as such across filters, reports, views, and so on.

So when an automation fails silently and unpredictably on subtasks – especially those created through templates – it breaks trust in the automation system as a whole.

I really hope ClickUp re-evaluates how this is categorized. It should be treated as a bug or architectural flaw, not just a roadmap item. Automations need to work predictably and reliably, especially in structured, templated environments.

If others are experiencing similar issues, feel free to add your voice here too.

Thanks,

Wim

Subtask functions can significantly impact the status and updates of many parent tasks. This will be a huge plus once it's built and implemented.

Currently running into issues with this. Need automations to trigger based on status of nested subtasks when moved into a new list. There is so much room for improvement with automations.

Nested subtasks are necessary, it seems pointless not having this automated. It is not practical having to manually change these. Click Up is supposed to make things easier not harder.

Open since 2021, i guess this will never implement this request.

Here's hoping.

My teams really need this feature. We are unable to set up our workflow properly without this feature. We built this workflow with the understanding this could work because it says subtasks. We currently have project set up with a parent tasks and subtasks as deliverables. Inside each of these deliverables are a set group of tasks that need to be completed before we can move to the next status for that deliverable. Without this we have to manually check if tasks are complete and then move this ourselves. We use this on 100's of projects per month.

I'm working as a consultant. My client needs this feature as soon as possible. We want to create a workflow "when nested subtasks are completed, a tag should be added to the subtask and when that tag is added, it should create nested subtasks for stage 2" and "when all the nested subtasks are completed, status of subtask should change to complete". This will help in changing the status of parent task automatically.

The automation specifically says "When this happens on tasks or subtasks" - this is horribly misleading that it wont' happen on subtasks and I have a major process built around this functionality. How is this not considered a bug??

I started with ClickUp and I came across this issue by surprise. Nested subtasks are much less useful if I can't automate around these too.

Clickup Help Center online states specifically "When Automations are triggered by subtasks, they'll also be triggered by nested subtasks."

https://help.clickup.com/hc/en-us/articles/6312128853015-Use-Automation-Triggers#:~:text=By%20default%2C%20Automations%20will%20be,be%20triggered%20by%20nested%20subtasks.

See image attached.

Automation says if tag is added, Add Assignee.

It only worked on task and subtask. Not on nested subtask.

This does seem like a bug...