How can I get more than one column within an epic in a story map view? (question for the Agile User Story Map Jira addon)

Question

Hello,

I've recently started using the Story Map plugin (which I really like by the way! 
), had a question which I'm hoping you can help with regarding structuring stories under an epic.

My question is can I have more than one story column under an epic - difficult to describe what I want in words, but if you take a look at this pic I found it helps describe the problem I'm trying to solve;

http://myresume.pm/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/story-map-example.png

So basically I want to do something similar in the Story Map plugin, however all I can get is, for example, with the 'Manage Email' epic a one column list of all of the stories under the epic (rather than 3 columns as per the image).  I really want to do it like the image and from what I've read on story mapping from Jeff Patton it's a good way to visualise a story map.

Is there a way I can achieve this in the Story Map plugin?  If not, I may have to start looking into an alternative unfortunately .

Thanks in advance

Raz

Florian Bauer · Answer

context can be added in categories like 'component', 'priority', status etc. with fields, which are provided by Jira.

However, yes we think about to add another 'context' filed to group epics together. Just click at the watch button at our marketplace listing than you will be informed about the progress.

Florian

Razwan Rafiq1 · Answer

Hi Florian,Thanks for the reply. That wouldn't work for me as Organise Email is the epic and Search and File are big stories underneath, with the stories underneath that being what are essentially playable items in a sprint.I need Organise Email in the story map to maintain context of where Search and File have come from.  I thought maintaining and showing context was the principle of a story map?Thanks Raz

Florian Bauer · Answer

Hi Raz,

do not use "Organize Email", "Manage Email" as Epic but the underlying "Search Email", "File Email". Than you have all the columns you want.

Next step would be to group your Epics together. Unfortunately there is no JIRA built in functionality to achieve that. However you can use another field to obtain the same effect. Use e.g. the components field, than you can color the epic groups together (with the color filter)

Another approach could be using swimlanes..

Cheers,

Florian