Can I assign several issues to one epic at once?

Question

I need to mark several issues in order to assign them to an epic at once. How can I do this with a next-gen project?

I cannot find a list view for bulk updates.

I tried to filter, but I cannot find something like "no epic".

I cannot display the result in a list in order to select/deselect some of the issues I need to assign to a particular epic.

Background: Some members create issues; other members have to sort them and assign them to epics.

Thank you!

Hazwan Ariffin · Answer

Hey Johannes,

Actually that's not really what I mean. By JQL (JIRA query language), I mean the issue navigator. For example:

That said, the workaround that I mentioned earlier is not applicable to a Next gen project. A next gen project is just a simplified project where you don't have all the complex configuration. It's a plain and simple project where you can just straightaway jump to the task. You can still search for the next gen project using the issue navigator and you'll be able to find all the issues without any Epic, however, you wouldn't be able to bulk edit "epic link" on the issues.

It seems that a next gen project uses a different method of structuring the epic issues and its child issues. It doesn't use Epic link as per the Classic project. This is mentioned in this feature request ticket - https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSWCLOUD-17239

Without Epic link, you wouldn't be able to bulk set the epic link for these issues without the epic. And moving issues to classic project, set the epic and moving it back to next gen is also not a viable solution because the epic link would be removed once it's moved back to the next gen project as stated by the Atlassian team here:

Epics behave slightly differently in next-gen projects and this is one example of that. We are formalising an issue hierarchy in next-gen projects (where we will have parent/child relationships) rather than using epic links. This will facilitate some cool stuff int he future around reporting and roll up estimation. Unfortunately in the short term, it means when you move issues to next-gen projects you will need to manually assign these issues to the relevant epic.
it's important to note the epic link has not actually been removed in the background- it's just not visible and is not useful within the context of the next-gen project. If you were to move your issues back to a classic project, for example, you would not lose this linkage. Although the 'Epic Name' and 'Epic Colour' custom fields would be lost.
In the future, as we build out the next-gen projects, we will provide an automated mechanism to create the new parent/child relationship based on the epic link but it just isn't something we have got to yet. I apologise we didn't make this clear for when you did the move.
Since then we have updated our docs in an attempt to make this more clear on https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftwarecloud/migrate-from-an-next-gen-project-to-a-classic-project-957974933.html

There's really no other way but to manually move the issues to epic one at a time. Otherwise, classic project is the better option here.

Johannes Schneider_fqbulj · Answer

Dear Hazwan, we are no programmers and we do not expect coding or doing something on a command line style , however you will name it - in order to do a simple action on few individually selected items just like almost anywhere else is a standard. The fact that this is not included in next-gen is a bit frustrating.

Hazwan Ariffin · Answer

In the issue navigator you can run this JQL:

project = <projectkey> and parent is empty and type not in (Sub-task, Epic)

Then, you'll be able to perform the bulk operation. That said, in a next gen project, you wouldn't be able to bulk add issues to an epic. The fastest way to do this is to enable Epic panel in your Next gen backlog and manually move issues to the epic