Bulk add items to a product Backlog Item in Jira

[Laura B Livnat]

How can I select and add bulk items to a Jira Product Backlog Item in a cloud instance. There was a feature for this in an older version of Jira.

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Laura B Livnat 

Are you referring to a Scrum agile board backlog for a Jira Software space? 

You mention adding items to an "item". Do you mean adding, for example, child Stories to an Epic, or Subtasks to a Story?

Was the older version of Jira where you saw this version actually a Jira Data Center environment versus the Jira Cloud (software-as-a-service) environment?

Can you provide any additional details about how that functionality worked? It may have been a third party app rather than native functionality.

[Laura B Livnat]

Yes, it was an old data center instance that we could bulk add many issues to a single issue of type "release" - a custom issueType. A dialog would come up when you pressed the "+" next to the issue adding field, and check all the issues you wanted attached to the issue "release."

I have the bulk add permission in the cloud instance, however there is no field to bulk add many issues to one issue. I can search and select the many issues, however the bulk add dialog has no field to attach the selected issues to the Release issue. 

Perhaps there is another way to do this? I am trying to create a release note that contains all the changes in a version of a service under test.

[Laura B Livnat]

Not sure if I was supposed to accept your answer, but if you have additional infoamtion I'd be happy to get in.

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Laura B Livnat 

I'm not sure if I understand your scenario.

There are two types of relationships that can be established between issue:

• parent/child (based on the issue type hierarchy)
• generic link

The first is subject to the issue type hierarchy; i.e.

Epics
|-- Stories, Tasks, Bugs
    |-- Sub-tasks

In Jira DC in an Epic, for example, you would see a section labeled "Issues in Epic" which would display the Stories/Tasks/Bugs that were "children" of the Epic.

If you clicked the "+" button next to that section you would get a dialog for creating brand new issues in that Epic, not selecting already existing issues.

For generic links those would appear in a separate section under the heading "Issue Links"

If you clicked the "+" button in that section you would get a dialog where you could select the type of link, and then enter issue keys for each issue you wanted to link to the issue you were viewing.

The above is description of native Jira Data Center functionality. If you had other options available to you that may have been provided by a third party app. You might want to consult with the Jira Admins for your instance to see if you can get clarity on that.

It sounds like you were using the generic link option, since you said the issues already existed.

In Jira Cloud you have the same basic functionality as described above. Here is an example of clicking the Linked Work Items (i.e. Issue Links) and getting the field where you can type in issue keys to link multiple issues to the one you are viewing.

You can do the same thing from the List view for a project, and from the Search Work Items screen.

If I have missed the mark on what you are trying to do, please let me know and try to provide more information about how you are blocked from achieving your goal.