What happen to stories under an epic, when the epic is converted to a story?

Question

I need to make changes to existing epics and convert them to stories. However, each epic has stories, tasks, and potentially sub-tasks under it. When I tried to convert an epic to a story, there are options to change the affected issues as well. If I do not change them manually, what will happen?

Will they be cascaded down automatically? If yes, what will happen to sub-tasks? If not, will the hierarchy be lost?

Thanks.

Bill Sheboy · Answer

Hi, Michelle.

Sorry for the long answer; I wanted to give you some specific steps to help better.

I can think of two ways to do this: a one-time, manual way and a repeatable way.  Both add the links before converting the Epic to a story.

One Time, Manual:

* Run a query to get all the children for the epic, and export the results
* Grab just the key values of the export so that you have the keys, one by one, each on a separate row/line
* Open up the parent epic, select Link under the ... menu
* Select your link type, such as Relates to
* Paste the list of keys, and tab off of the field
* The keys should all now display independently
* Select Link to add them
* Now convert the Epic to a story with Move, removing the parent/child relationship, and the links will remain

Repeatable:

* Use the automation rule features to make a generic processor to do this for any epic.  You can read more about automation rules here: https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/automate-your-jira-cloud-processes-and-workflows/
* Here is an example of the rule to add the links:* Trigger: manual
* Condition: issue type equal Epic
* Branch: for all Stories or issues in the Epic* Action: link as Relates to the triggering issue (the Epic)

* From the Epic, select and run the rule
* Now convert the Epic to a story with Move, removing the parent/child relationship, and the links will remain

Best regards,

Bill

Michelle Huang_gt7rhl · Answer

Hi Bill, Thank you for your response. What is the best way to do it in this case? There are many child issues under the epic, and they should be linked back to the story (converted from the epic). However, this cannot be done because I have to move the child items first.

Bill Sheboy · Answer

Hi @Michelle Huang  -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

As you noted in the Move function, when converting the issue type of an Epic, you are prompted to move the child items first, perhaps to a new parent epic.  If you do nothing at that point in Move, the link between the original epic and children will be removed.  There is no cascading "down-casting" of the children to a lower level item.

You can observe this during the multiple confirmation steps for this Move operation, as it shows that the Epic Name, Epic Link, Epic Color, etc. will be cleared and that the links are removed.  The immediate children's Epic Links are removed.

Please see this documentation for more information on Move:

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/move-an-issue/

Best regards,

Bill