Xray traceability report not listing issues that have a parent

[Abu Abraham]

We have Xray cloud instance and noticed that upon generating the traceability report, the tasks that have a parent (which is in another project and is an issue type Feature) are not listed at all.

We can list the all the issues in the list view of JIRA

[Trisha Griffis]

This is expected behavior based on how Xray processes and displays issue relationships in the Traceability Report.

Key Reasons & Fixes

1. Hierarchical Filters Matter 

Xray supports up to three levels of requirement hierarchy (e.g., Epic → Story → Sub-task) in its traceability reports—but only for issues you explicitly include in the report filters. If your parent issue is from another project and wasn’t included in the filter, its children won’t show up either—even if they have Fix Versions or coverage data.

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 Fix: Use the “Advanced” filter to explicitly include parent issues by project or issue key so Xray includes them in the trace structure.

2. Correct Link Type Relationships

Xray only displays traceability based on recognized issue link types—e.g., “Tests” or “Tested by.” If your tasks are attached through parent-child link types or reside in a different project hierarchy not enabled for Xray coverage, they may be excluded.

Xray does not traverse relationships like Test Sets or Test Executions as children of Requirements.

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Fix: Ensure the parent requirements are covered and linked using supported link types. Also confirm that the parent project has Xray test coverage enabled.

Response provided by Jer-nee Consulting, an Atlassian Gold Solutions Partner. We're here to support you in your success, feel free to reach out if you have nay other questions or issues. 

[Abu Abraham]

Thanks for the reply. Could you please explain how can we "Use the “Advanced” filter to explicitly include parent issues by project or issue key so Xray includes them in the trace structure."

Our structure is as follows - 

Feature 1 (Project A) --> Task 1 (Project B) --> Test 1 (Project C)

We are able to cover all tasks in Project B with tests in Project C, but if there are any tasks that have a parent in Project A, that is not listed like the one above.

Does the advanced filter take 2 projects using JQL

project in ("Project B", "Project A) AND fixVersion in ("vProjectB", vProjectA)

This does not work and II have tried a few other combinations also.

How to we explicitly include parent issues if this is not possible?