How to create story not linked to epic?

[Aaron Jones]

I have a scrum backlog with various epics. I am trying to create a story not linked to an epic, but Jira automatically assigns an epic to each story, and I can't find any way to un-link that epic. How can I either create a freestanding story or un-link a linked story?

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @Aaron Jones 

Welcome to the community.

Are you working with a Company Managed project or a Team Managed project? It will say at the bottom of the navigation pane on the left.

Jira does not inherently automatically link a story to an Epic. If that is happening in your project, it may be that there is an Automation rule or another customization that is causing that to happen.

If you are working with a Company Managed project, you should be able to remove the story from the epic by viewing the details of the story, clicking in the Epic Link field, and clicking the X to clear the field.

[Aaron Jones]

Hi Trudy,

Thanks for the help. It's a team-managed project. I do not believe there is any automation in this project (if so, I can't find an Automation tab).

Is there a way to remove it in a team-managed project?

Thanks,

Aaron

[Aron Gombas _Midori_]

+1 on what Trudy said, it is unlikely that it is done by a built-in Jira feature.

Talk to you admin and check if your Jira instance uses Automation for Jira, ScriptRunner or some other app that may be the "culprit".

[Trudy Claspill]

@Aaron Jones 

In a Team Managed project Scrum board, you should be able to create an issue in the project from the Backlog screen by clicking on the blue Create button at the very top of the screen in the menu bar. Review the fields in that dialog and confirm that there is no field that names the parent epic.

If after creating the issue that way it is still automatically ending up in an epic then there is likely some automation rule or other customization that is doing that.

You can remove an issue from an Epic on the Scrum Backlog screen by clicking on the issue in the issue list and dragging-and-dropping that issue on top of the Issues Without Epic option in the Epics panel.

If you don't see the Epics panel, you'll reveal it like this.

This article tells how to manage Automation Rules for a Team Managed project.

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/add-rules-to-your-team-managed-board/

[Aaron Jones]

Thanks so much Trudy, that solved my issue!