meaning of parent and child relations

[jeroen_wilmes]

Hopefully someone can help me in the right direction.
I'm wondering what I can do with the link types "parent" and "child".

I made Epic XX parent of Epic YY, but in the roadmap the still appear as "equal" epics.

What is purpose of parent / child links? 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

Epics can't contain other Epics.  To group Epics together, you'll need to go up to Initiatives and Themes.

A link saying "parent/child" is not a parent/child relationship as far as the software is concerned, it's just a link.

[jeroen_wilmes]

thanks that is what a thought. now I'm confirmed

[John Funk · Accepted solution]

Hi Jeroen,

You can't make an Epic the parent of another Epic. If you are using Advanced Roadmaps, you can add a new issue type such as Initiative or Theme or something to that affect, and then build your hierarchy. 

[Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira]

Hi @jeroen_wilmes

just to add to Nic and John's answers, it's worth noting that several add-ons from the Atlassian Marketplace allow using issue link relationships to create hierarchies between issues. Structure, or JXL for Jira (the app that my team is working on) are prominent examples.

Here's how this looks in action in JXL, based on a parent/child issue link. This works between epics, too, and also across multiple levels of hierarchy:

Best,

Hannes