Group by Epics in Business Projects

[Royce Hodnett]

There seems to be a known limitation that Business Projects don't allow for good grouping of tasks/sub-tasks by Epics. What solutions have you implemented to get around this limitation?

I'm currently considering just allowing teams that need that functionality to use Software projects but I hope there's a better way.

Thanks

[Shalini Pradhan]

Hello @Royce Hodnett ,

Good day! Welcome to Atlassian Community :)

Yes, you are right, there is a limitation in Jira cloud where workitems cant be grouped by Epic in business spaces ( both team managed and company managed )

However, we do understand how important this feature is, and therefore, we have a Feature Request in place for the same.

• https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JWMCLOUD-341

As a workaround, you can create a seperate company managed board, add the filter query to show issues of the concerned business space and copy the board link and add that as a shortcut on your business board. You can group your workitems on that new board by epic and access that board from shortcut section whenever needed

[Rahul_RVS]

Hi @Royce Hodnett 

Welcome to the community !!

If you are open to try out an alternate mktplace solution to group Epics and view its children in a tree view, whether in a Business or any project types, take a look at

Issue Hierarchy

The app allows you to view your issues in a tree view along with the linked issues shown as child issue. Also you can filter your child issues as shown below.

In the hierarchy view you can view the % progress of your child issues as well. The app sums up the time spent / story points at each parent level. You can also view "%Completed" at each parent level based on status of child issues as per your requirement.

Do give it a try.

Disclaimer : I am one of the app team member

     

[Paul Glantschnig _Appfire_]

Hi @Royce Hodnett,

As already mentioned, business projects don't support grouping by epic in the List or Board views, and there's the feature request open for it.

A couple of additional workarounds beyond what's been mentioned:

• Parent field in the List view: Business projects do support the Parent column in the List view. You can add it and then sort by Parent to get tasks visually clustered under their epics. It's not true grouping with collapse/expand, but it gives you a rough view of the structure.

• Saved filter + Software board: As Shalini suggested, creating a company-managed board with a filter scoped to your business project lets you use the Board's grouping features. You can bookmark it or add it as a shortcut in the business project's sidebar.

• Switching to Software projects: This does unlock epic grouping natively, and company-managed Software projects can be configured to look and feel very similar to Business projects. If the teams don't use sprints, you can simply leave the backlog and sprints disabled. It's a pragmatic solution if you just need the grouping.

The trade-off with workarounds 1 and 2 is that neither gives you proper grouped rows with totals or expand/collapse, which is probably what you're after.

Best, Paul

[Paul Glantschnig _Appfire_]

One more option if switching project types feels like overkill.

If you're open to solutions from the Atlassian Marketplace, JXL supports grouping by epic (and other hierarchy levels) regardless of whether you're in a Business or Software project. You get proper expand/collapse tree rows, and you can add sum-ups to see totals per epic.

Here's what that looks like:

It works with any project type, so you wouldn't need to move your teams off Business projects.

Full disclosure: I work for the team that builds JXL.

[Mary from Planyway]

Hi @Royce Hodnett 

If you consider using plugins, you may check Planyway for Jira. 
The app offers multiple ways to group cross-project work items, and epic view is one of them.