New Related Work Items layout

[James Rickards _SN_]

I've just noticed a new view for Child Work Items, and it's getting much hate from our users.

We predominately use issue links, and don't use subtasks nor the parent/child hierarchy.

Currently when opening a work item, you no longer see linked work items and subtasks in a separate panel. Atlassian is now grouping these panels together so you can only see one or the other. They have defaulted to show child work items (always empty), which means that we now need to click to show linked work items (always populated). 

My question is whether this is bothering anyone else? Does anyone know of a way to change the default to show Linked Work Items rather than Child work items?

[Kelly Lillis]

@James Rickards _SN_ It's driving me nuts and I keep thinking we don't have linked work items when we do. Has anyone found a way to make it default to links instead of sub tasks? Or at least make it clear that links are there when defaulting to sub tasks. 

[Marc -Devoteam-]

Hi @James Rickards _SN_ 

Does this involve the "Related Work" section.

This is a rolling out feature.

This has als been in the latest update, https://confluence.atlassian.com/cloud/blog/2026/02/atlassian-cloud-changes-jan-26-to-feb-2-2026