How to assign Story as a Parent to a CWMTASK?

[Marlon Dale]

I'm trying to create stories in a backlog for sprint planning and then tie tasks to the story by having a general process as a story and then going granular with the CWMTASK items of individual task that need to be done for the story, but I can't seem to assign a Story as a Parent to a CWMTASK. It only searches other CWMTASK items.

If this is the case what is ServiceNow's best practice in CWM to accomplish what I'm trying to do?

[aruncr0122]

Hi @Marlon Dale ,

In Collaborative Work Management (CWM), the Parent field on a CWMTASK is designed to reference only other CWMTASK records, not Stories.

Best practice:
Use the Story field (or Work Item reference) on CWMTASK to link each task to its parent Story. This way:

The Story acts as the main work item for sprint planning and progress tracking.

CWMTASKs represent the detailed, actionable steps under that Story.

Reporting, backlog, and sprint boards will correctly roll up effort and status from CWMTASKs to their Story.

So, instead of using the Parent field, use the Story or Work Item reference field to tie CWMTASKs to their Story.

[Marlon Dale]

I don't see any story or work item reference field on the CWMTASK. When looking columns on the table sn_cwm_task the only reference fields available to me are:

• Additional assignee list
• Assigned to
• Watch List
• Task
• Assignment gorup
• Epic
• Task type
• Parent
• Sprint
• Board

[aruncr0122]

Hi @Marlon Dale,

You’re right — by default, CWMTASK can’t have a Story as its parent since the Parent field only points to other CWMTASKs.

If you want to link a Story to a CWMTASK, the best option is to add a custom reference field (for example, u_story) on the sn_cwm_task table that points to the Story (rm_story) table.
That way, you can directly associate each CWMTASK with its Story, use it for reporting, and keep your backlog organized around Stories.

This approach gives you a clear Story → CWMTASK relationship without changing the default CWM hierarchy.

[Marlon Dale]

I appreciate you for taking the time to answer my question. It seems CWM is still limited and can't do everything VTB and SAFe can since I can open a story in VTB and add scrum tasks from there.