JIRA Portfolio: epic link vs parent link

[Joan Puig]

When using JIRA Portfolio you can use "parent link" field to establish a hierarchy. If using Epic Link field with stories, does this serve the same purpose as "parent link"?

[Tarun Sapra]

Hello @Joan Puig

Both Parent link and Epic link are technically different fields but serving the same functional purpose.

Epic link is better supported with JIra APis and other plugins like Script Runner. Thus, please continue to use epic link for story - epic relationship. But for Epic relationship with Initiative/Theme (via portfolio) use the field "Parent Link" which get's automatically populated by the Jira portfolio. Thus you can add the field "Parent link" on the view screen of Epic so see the link to parent and child epics will appear by themselves on the parent initiative.

Hierarchy which I recommend is

Initiative -> Epic -> Story.

[Igor Sereda [ALM Works]]

In addition to what Tarun said, Parent Link is used for all additional levels that you can configure in Portfolio (not just the one above Epic).