Initiative and Epic start dates in Portfolio

Karen Thomas

I am attempting to use Jira Portfolio for managing our larger initiatives but can not get Epics or Initiatives start dates to work. Scheduled Start date looks locked down and Target Date, which is set to Jan 2020 for the second Initiative isn't being recognized.  I changed the view to be by Target Date and that didn't work. I also changed the earliest start date to Jan 2020 and no dice. The Initiative doesn't have anything open beneath it other than an Epic and all are set to "backlog" status. 

Any advice on how to get this to work? 

Earl McCutcheon

Hi karen,

Getting an unestimated issue to show up on the schedule should work if you set up target dates and view the Target schedule.  An unestimated issue will be scheduled when it has either a sprint, a release, or targets dates assigned to it.

Additional details on Scheduling unestimated items can be seen in the  "Scheduling" documentation particularly the child pages:

• Scheduling unestimated items based on target dates &
• Scheduling unestimated items based on default estimates

One thing that is really common setting that can trigger this kind of behavior is if you have a release on the issues where the release date is set to a "Fixed Release Date" in the past and the release would be used to schedule the issue and as it is set to release in the past the issue is ignored and will not scheduled on the next setting which is target dates as the two values contradict each other.

Additionally when an issue is not showing up on the schedule it can come down to one or more of the data points not lining up with the plan settings, and there are several items that could be a contributing factor, the following is a list of items to start looking at to locate the conflict point:

• The Fix Version and Affects Version fields must be visible for the issues to show up
  • As one initiative is showing up but not the other this one would apply if you have multiple projects with the initiative and the second project has the field hidden
• Filter permissions: Is the filter you are using shared with you? 
  • This one again would apply if you had multiple boards linked to the project and the first boards filter was shared and the second board was not
• Explicitly excluded before: has an issue been explicitly excluded from the plan before?
  • In this case, go to the plan configuration > Issue Sources > Edit sources, and check if the issue shows up as you go through the setup wizard again. if it was excluded, it will show up as unchecked in the table 
• Release assignments to a release that is excluded: If an issue is assigned to a fixVersion that is excluded from the plan, then the issues in that version will not be loaded
  • Same as above check the issue sources for excluded versions 
• Unintended Filters in the UI - accidentally any filter set
  • like for example tin your screenshot I can see the "PT Board Team" is selected and if the secondary issue is not assigned to that team it will not be displayed.
• Custom field configurations: Any changes to other fields, like the example above having removed the fixVersion field at all from the issues? are there any other hidden fields that are portfolio fields like Team, estimates, story points.

Regards,
Earl