Possible to bypass the EPIC level and link story to issue type above Epic (Portfolio Hierarchy)?

[Tom Gross]

This is our current hierarchy with Portfolio

• Initiative
• Feature
• Epic
• Story
• SubTask

I have a request from a team that doesn't want to use Epics, but link Stories directly to Features.  I removed Epic from the project's issue type scheme and added a parent link on the story screen to link to the next level up in the hierarchy.  When I try to use the parent link on the story it expects a Epic link. 

I understand that the relationship between a story and the epic is an out-of-the-box one that used an Epic Link and not a generic link.

Is there a way to get past this or this the Epic->Story->SubTask Hierarchy something that cannot be altered?

We currently have Portfolio.  Would something like Structure allow us to do something like this? 

Can Portfolio and Structure live happily on the same instance of JIRA?

Possible to have multiple hierarchies within JIRA?

[Michael Andolfatto]

Hi @Tom Gross ,

I haven't personally done this in a live environment before so I would advise testing it first to ensure the functionality is as expected, but I was able to do this by adding in Feature to the same hierarchy level as Epic, and then removing the Epic Link field from my project's screens.