Epics in a kanban board for multiple projects

[Magda Biskup]

I have set up a Kanban board which provides an overview of three different projects and the Epic labels are not showing (neither on the board nor in the backlog). It is the next gen, company managed Kanban board. 

I have read documentation here https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/manage-epics-in-a-kanban-project/ however I don't see Epics on the left side in the backlog view. All I see in there is the Versions button. I see Epics listed in the backlog among other tickets.

What I would rather have is how it works on the Scrum board where backlog and board can be filtered by Epic (using Epic dropdown) and Epics themselves don't show up in the backlog, but just the stories and tasks in the epics are there. 

How do I go about seeing epics in such a way?

Thanks

[Bill Sheboy · Accepted solution]

Hi @Magda Biskup 

Some of the things you note are unclear, so please let me know if I misunderstand you use case.

• You have 3 projects' information and want to show them on one Kanban board
• You do not state if all 3 projects are team-managed, company-managed, or a mix of types
• I assume: you created a filter combining the information for the projects, saved the filter, and then created a Kanban board, storing it in a company managed project

Okay, if you have mapped any status values to Backlog on the Board Settings > Columns configuration, you should see a backlog.  On that same column configuration page, is an option to enable the Epic Panel.

Of note: I recommend treating a board like this as read-only and do not make any updates to issues or status.  Instead, allow the teams owning the source projects do the updates.  Otherwise this could lead to problems/visibility issues for the teams.

Kind regards,
Bill

[Magda Biskup]

Thanks @Bill Sheboy

To answer your questions - these are 3 Scrum team-managed projects that are pulled into a Company-Managed Kanban board. This was done using the filters as you correctly assumed. The reason I am using Company-Managed project to pull them together is because I need Swimlanes and Limited WIP features which don't exists in Team-managed version of Kanban project. 

Epics panel now shows (it was disabled, I don't know how I could have missed it) but new issue popped - epics show in the Epic panel as Unlabeled. I suspect it's because Company-Managed Kanban project is looking for Epic Name field and it doesn't seem to exist in Epic issue type in team-managed projects. Is there a way to address it?

Thanks

Magda 

[Bill Sheboy]

Sadly, not yet.  I recall this is due to the differences in the way company-managed versus team-managed projects like epics to their child issues...

And I remember seeing a suggestion on this for company managed.  That probably will not be addressed as there is an in-progress suggestion to add multiple boards for team-managed: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSWCLOUD-17371