How do I find and link child issues across different boards

Hi Trudy, thanks for the quick turnaround. The space that contains my epic is classified as "Team-managed business". I'll be utilising that space to create epics, which will contain child tickets which are located in that same space, as well as the following spaces: 

Space 2 - Ideas, currently classified as "Team-managed software"

Space 3 - Development, currently classified as "Company-managed software".

Hello @Justine Chan 

The short answer is you can't do that.

As I said, the Epic/child relationship for items in Team-managed projects can be made only between items in the same space.

Space 1 - Team-managed business: the Epics in this space can have children only from Space 1. The child issues in Space 1 can only have Epic/parents from Space 1. Epics in this space can't have child issues in Spaces 2 or 3.

Space 2 - likewise in this space -all Epic/child relationships for items in this space can be only with other items also in Space 2. Items in this Space can't be children of items in Space 1 or 3.

Space 3 - since this one is Company-managed it's epic/child relations could be with issues in other spaces, but only in other Company-managed spaces. Items in this Space can't be children of items in Space 1 or 2.

The only relationships items in these spaces can have with items in the other spaces must be made through the generic item linking functionality. Jira doesn't recognize generic item links as having parent/child hierarchy.

Thanks Trudy. Just wanted to double check, if I change the classification of those three spaces, such as reclassifying Space 1 and Space 2 into "Company-managed software", would that allow epics in Space 1 to contain child tickets from Space 2 and 3?

Or would the above not work because the epic/child relationship can only be established between items in the same space, regardless of how the spaces are classified?

Hello Justine, 

It isn't possible to change a space from Team-managed to Company-managed nor vice versa. You would need to create new Company-managed spaces and then move the work items from the Team-managed spaces to the Company-managed spaces. And then, yes, it is supported to have Epics in separate Company-managed spaces from their child items 

There is risk of data loss in such a move. You can find some information on that topic here.

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/migrate-between-team-managed-and-company-managed-projects/

Hello Trudy, thanks for the detailed explanation and providing the link to the article. In that case, if I follow the path of the generic item linking functionality, does that mean the following will happen? 

1 - Child Work Item: Only child work items that exist within the same Space will be retrieved. 

2 - Linked Work items: For linking work items that exist in another Space. See below screenshot as an example. 

Hello Justine,

The items that can displayed/linked within the Child Work Items table depends on the type of the space of the item you are viewing, and the type of he space of the child work items. My previous response details the limitations in that regard. The table will show any Child items from any space, where the Parent/Child relationship has been successfully created.

And work items that are related through generic item linking will display separately in the Linked Work Items table, as shown in your image.

Here is some documentation about the generic Link Items functionality.

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/link-issues/