Employee onboarding usually follows the same process, but the dates change for every new hire. With Easy Templates for Jira, you can create one onboarding template and calculate all task dates automatically from a single Start Date variable.
This is useful for scheduling tasks like hardware setup, account provisioning, orientation, training, and review checkpoints — without manually updating every issue.
Example onboarding template structure
Example parent issue:
Employee onboarding
Example child issues or subtasks:
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Prepare laptop and equipment
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Create accounts and permissions
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Send welcome message
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First day orientation
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Security training
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Team introduction
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End of week 1 check-in
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End of month 1 review
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Probation review
How to set it up
1. Create your onboarding template
Create a template with the issue structure you want to reuse for each new employee.
For example, add one parent issue and a set of child issues or subtasks for all onboarding steps.
2. Add a Start Date variable
Create a template variable called:
Start Date
This variable will be filled in when the template is applied and used to calculate dates in the onboarding tasks.
Use this syntax to reference it in expressions:
var("Start Date")
3. Switch date fields to Expression mode
For each task where the date should be calculated automatically:
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Open the field
...menu -
Choose Use expression
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Enter your expression
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Save the template
Example expressions for onboarding tasks
Prepare laptop and equipment
3 working days before the employee starts:
var("Start Date").minusWorkingDays(3)
Create accounts and permissions
2 working days before the start date:
var("Start Date").minusWorkingDays(2)
Send welcome message
1 day before the start date:
var("Start Date").minusDays(1)
First day orientation
On the employee’s first day:
var("Start Date")
Security training
1 day after the start date:
var("Start Date").plusDays(1)
Team introduction
2 days after the start date:
var("Start Date").plusDays(2)
End of week 1 check-in
1 week after the start date:
var("Start Date").plusWeeks(1)
End of month 1 review
1 month after the start date:
var("Start Date").plusMonths(1)
Probation review
3 months after the start date:
var("Start Date").plusMonths(3)
Expression syntax used in this example
Reference the variable
var("Start Date")
Add time
var("Start Date").plusDays(2)
var("Start Date").plusWeeks(1)
var("Start Date").plusMonths(3)
Subtract time
var("Start Date").minusDays(1)
var("Start Date").minusWorkingDays(3)
Optional: calculate child tasks from the parent issue
Instead of using the variable in every child issue, you can set a date on the parent issue and calculate child task dates from that field.
Example:
parent.fields("Due Date").minusDays(2)
You can also use the short form:
parent.duedate
This is helpful when child tasks should depend on the parent onboarding issue timeline.
Result
With one Start Date variable, you can generate a complete employee onboarding plan with dates calculated automatically. This makes onboarding faster, more consistent, and much easier to manage.