issueFunction in epicsOf() is too complex for Scrum board

Question

I'm trying to build a scrum board that includes certain Stories in the current Jira project + Stories whose Epic Link points to another Jira project. (This is a finite list; the search will yield only 1 or 2 other Jira projects. I am an Admin on all projects.)

Working in project ABC, I tried to search for all Epics of project ABC with this query: issueFunction in epicsOf("project = 'ABC'"). The search works, but it results in this message on the Board Configuration screen: "The projects in this board cannot be listed because of the complexity of the board filter." Additionally, I cannot start sprints because of this limitation.

Is there another way to query Epics from another project that are linked to Stories in the current project?

Example:

My project is ABC. Epics in project XYZ have Issues from project ABC.

Epic XYZ-100 is the Epic link for three stories:

* XYZ-123
* ABC-456
* ABC-457

A filter on the scrum board of project ABC should include stories ABC-456 and ABC-457. A simple query of project=ABC excludes Stories linked to outside Epics.

Jennifer Kurtz · Answer

Hi Nic, thanks for your reply. I'm trying to get issuesOf an Epic that belongs to another project, so I can see stories my team is doing for another team. The real problem is that the results sort of paralyze the scrum board, so I can't create or close a sprint. (I can still move issues across the board.) My current workaround is to take that piece out of the board filter, save the filter, close the sprint, then put the script back in.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

"issueFunction" is a search trick provided by the Scriptrunner app.  It is not a part of Atlassian's base Jira product.

I'm going to be a bit brutal here, but hey, Atlassian says "Open company, no Bullshit, so I'll try:

* I work for Adaptavist.  I'm a Consultant, not a Scriptrunner product person, but feel free to assume that it is in my interest to plug and sell Scriptrunner as much as possible.
* Which makes the next bit look odd - Scriptrunner's issueFunction thing is not always a good thing.  It does open up a huge amount of functionality.  I truly believe that our SR people have done everything they can to make it work well.  It certainly worked well when Jamie first wrote it and I went "ooohh, that would save me having to write a new plugin for everything my company is trying to do in Jira 3.a-very-low-number".
* But it is not part of plain Jira and it can do bad things.  This means that it can do things that Atlassian cannot directly control.  Jamie, Jon and their SR teams do talk to Atlassian, a lot, but the alignment is not perfect.  issueFunction works, but it's less than ideal, and falls over when Atlassian don't want to provide what it needs, or the SR developers don't want to have to do it the way Atlassian is demanding it happens.

I am afraid you have run into a case where issueFunction falls over.  It is trying to answer your question, but when Cloud Jira asks it, it is not able to give back an answer that Jira Cloud can handle.

I do not know if Jira Cloud is asking the wrong thing, or if SR-Cloud is responding with something too complex for Jira Cloud to handle.

I will ask, on both sides.  But before I do, can you confirm the exact query that is not working right?

You have said "issueFunction in epicsOf("project = 'ABC')" - is that really exactly what you are running?  (Ignoring the ABC abstraction - we don't need the actual project key unless it's outside the supported format - 2-10 characters, first one A-Z, the rest A-Z or 0-9)

Niranjan · Answer

Hi @Jennifer Kurtz ,

Could you try this query

project in (ABC, XYZ) and issueFunction in linkedIssuesOf("project=JCEI", "is Epic of") and type = Story