Changing Parent Issue Type - Can cause issues with Child Linkage?

[Corey K]

I'm about to change some Epics into a new custom Issue Type. 

Will this cause any linkage issue with the child Stories associated with the existing Epics?

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Corey K 

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

Exactly how do you intend to change the Epic issues to another issue type? Will you be using the Move action to change the issue type?

In Jira the native hierarchy is:

Level 1 = Epics
|-- Level 0 = "standard" issue types (story, task, bug, etc)
    |-- Level -1 = sub-tasks

A given issue's parent must come from the level directly above it. If you are changing the Epics into a different issue type that is not also at Level 1, then the parent/child relationship will be broken.

Are you working with Jira Data Center or Jira Cloud? Click the Help button (near your avatar in Jira) and select About. Tell us what it says there. If you see a version number in the format 10.3.4 then you are using Jira Data Center. If you don't see something like that then you are using Jira Cloud. In that case we need to know if you are using a Free, Standard, Premium, or Enterprise subscription.

The reason I ask is because in Jira Data Center and in Jira Cloud for Premium and Enterprise subscriptions it is possible to modify the issue hierarchy to add levels above Level 1, and to add custom issue types at Level 1. If you are changing the Epics to another custom issue type that is at level 1, then the parent/child relationship should be retained.

[VENKATESWARLU KURUVA]

Hi Corey,

Yes, it can break the parent-child linkage. When you change an Epic to a custom issue type, the child Stories may lose their Epic link since that relationship is tied to the Epic issue type specifically.

Before you change:

Note down all child Stories linked to each Epic.

After converting, manually re-link them using parent link or issue links to the new issue type.