JIRA subtask is not creating a Parent Link to the Parent issue

[Ellen Van Hees]

My customer doesn't have Portfolio in the JIRA license. 

However, I am still able to create Subtasks for issues. I can also query on issues that either have a Parent Link or that don't have one.  But the Parent Link itself remains empty as a field on the Subtask, but also the column Parent Link in my query results remains empty. 

It seems a bit strange that the Subtask feature is available when Portfolio is not in the license, but the Parent Link feature doesn't seem to function when Portfolio is not in the JIRA license. 

Has anybody got some info on this?

[Tarun Sapra · Accepted solution]

Hello @Ellen Van Hees

The "Sub-task" feature has nothing to do with portfolio, it's a built-in Jira core/Software feature i.e. the issue types like stories, tasks etc have the ability to have "sub-tasks"

Parent link field is a custom field supported only by Portfolio plugin thus you can use the field only when you have valid license of the Portfolio plugin. As using this field you can create custom issuetype hierarchy

Sample Portfolio hierarchy

Initiative  -> Epic -> Story -> sub-task

Here;s Initiative and epic are connected via parent link field which is provided by portfolio. 

By default Jira supports the following hierarchy

Epic- > Story -> sub-task