Story points and % complete on a Jira initiative

Your site has a level above epics, often called Initiative, and you want each initiative’s story points and % complete as numbers. On Atlassian Community it reads “I would like to see the total number numeric value in the rollup and not the gauge line graphic, is this possible?”, or “I am having trouble understanding why this works for Epics but not Initiatives.” This page says what Jira shows by itself, the Automation rule and where it stops, then what Sumline does.

What Jira does by itself

Levels above epic are a Premium feature. “Jira Premium and Enterprise customers can also create and manage additional levels in their work type hierarchy” (Atlassian). If your site has initiatives, it has Plans as well.
Plans rolls estimates up to the initiative. Progress by story points or days takes estimates from every level below and shows how many work items are unestimated (Atlassian); progress by work item count looks only at the level directly beneath (Atlassian). The figures are the plan’s, shown when you open the plan (Atlassian).
On the initiative itself, nothing adds up. Story points are never summed into a parent outside Plans (JRACLOUD-90636, “Not Being Considered”).

The Automation rule

Atlassian publishes a rule that sums epics’ story points into their initiative:

Trigger: Field value changed → Story Points.
Condition: Issue Type equals Epic.
Branch to the epic’s parent initiative.
Inside the branch, Lookup work items for the initiative’s epics.
Inside the branch, Edit work item → Story Points → {{lookupIssues.Story Points.sum}}.

Atlassian’s article uses the Parent Link field, which the smart values reference says is being deprecated; on a current site an epic’s initiative is its Parent, so the lookup is parent = {{issue.key}}, as in Sum story points from subtasks to epics in Jira. Write into a field of your own, so the initiative keeps its own estimate.

Where it stops, in Atlassian’s words and ours:

It sums the epics’ own points. The epics need a rule of their own to hold their stories’ total first, so it is two rules, or three with subtasks.
Existing initiatives stay empty until one of their epics’ points is edited, and an epic linked after it already had points does not start the rule either (Atlassian’s article).
Rule scope. An initiative whose epics live in other spaces needs a multi-space or global rule, or the lookup finds nothing.
A percentage is another rule: see Jira epic % complete by points and by issue count, and repeat it one level up.
A lookup returns at most 100 work items (Atlassian), and every run counts toward your site’s Automation usage.

With Sumline

Sumline is our app. On a site with initiatives (they need Jira Premium), it shows each initiative’s totals without a rule or a field:

Story points, original estimate, time spent and remaining, added up from subtasks through stories and epics to the initiative, children in other spaces included.
% complete two ways, as numbers: by estimate and by issue count across all levels below, side by side. An initiative with nothing estimated shows “—”, never 100%, and unestimated children are named.
On the initiative itself, in the Details column and the Sumline panel.
One row per initiative in a table per space or across spaces, once an admin picks the initiative level in Settings: sort by any column, open a row to the epics under it, and download it as Excel or CSV.
Each estimate counted once: when an epic and its stories both carry points, one level counts and the value set aside is listed.

What it does not do: Sumline only reads, so the totals are not a Jira field and do not appear in Plans. How it counts is in How the numbers are calculated.