nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

Why can't subtasks have an Epic

Yair Spolter

I have a board that shows me all issues that belong to a particular epic, however subtasks don't appear. I need the subtasks to appear as well.

Accepted answers

All comments

Thomas Schlegel

Hi Yair,

this question was discussed in detail the last time here: https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/35769410

Regards,

Thomas

Yair Spolter

Thanks for the quick reply Thomas.

I looked through that thread, and what I understood from it is that Atlassian decided that it's not appropriate/important to include sub-tasks on my Kanban board (and therefore you can't assign epics to subtasks - and they don't even inherit the parent's epic). Is that correct?

I'm not sure I am applying what I read there correctly to my question, so if you could please confirm...

If that is the response, I have some trouble understanding why the tool would want to force me to work in a way that I don't find useful for my personal workflow.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

That is correct - subtasks are useless in Scrum planning and just waste space and make noise.

A subtask always belongs to its parent, and that parent can have an Epic, which then implies that the sub-task is inside that Epic. But there's an oversight in that the subtasks don't actually inherit the information internally.

There are open issues which Atlassian have accepted to get this design flaw fixed.

Yair Spolter

Thanks Nic. My main issue is that the subtask does not inherit the epic from the parent. So if that is being fixed, it will remedy the situation for me. Any idea on estimated time frame when we can expect this to be resolved? Are we talking days? Weeks? Months? More?

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

There is a workaround I've used on Server editions of JIRA, and I think you can get close to it on Cloud.

With the Script Runner add-on, create a scripted field, or populate a text field, that is a copy of the epic name that should be there on the sub-tasks. It will need to echo the name for parent-level issues and the epic itself, so it's horribly redundant, but at least you'll be able to do a sane search.

Yair Spolter

Thanks Nic, but we don't have the add-on.

Tajinder Gill

You can do:

parentEpic = My-EPIC-ID

This is built into Jira.

Kit Hygh

I have been trying this, but nothing beyond the Mastertasks on the Epic come up. No Tasks on the Mastertasks, nor Bugs written linked to the Mastertasks nor Tasks. Is there a trick to using this or a configuration that I would need to do?

Joel_usauwx

We don't either. seems every time i turn around their pointing to our wallets... buy an add-on. This is getting frustrating.

Prashant Deshmukh

This worked for me.

I was using EpicLink = My-EPIC-ID which did not work as it was looking for only directly linked items

Morgan Faer

Which field on my sub-task should this query be added to so that it pulls information from its parent ticket?

Anudeep Gade

I had a similar issue for my filters where sub-tasks doesn't appear.

I had to workaround by linking manually the sub-task to the Epic by any link type like "is part of" or "relates to". Then adapt the filter to display the issues which are linked to Epic.

Like this

issue in linkedIssues( epicIssue )

Then we can see sub tasks

But I also prefer if Atlassian can automatically inherit the epic link for sub-task from its parent.

mike_38fgmh

Just now discovered. Note: running Jira Server 6.2 (I know, old)

tl;dr Create task as regular, non-sub-task level, then do "convert to subtask". Epic Link will remain populated.

I have tasks/stories with subtasks and just noticed some of those subtasks do have the "Epic Link" field populated, and so show in filters for "Epic Link = ....", which is very nice.

Looking at their history it's because they were created as regular issues, then moved to be subtasks, or "convert to subtask".

So, not great, but a workaround to populate the "Epic Link" field for use in filters and the like.

---

Edit: unfortunately this doesn't work. Just did it but the Epic Link field did not remain populated. Other sub-tasks do still have it populated but I have no idea why. It may be the field is available on a bulk transition out of the initial creation state, in our case from "Submitted" -> "Assigned", and that transition opens basically an edit issue dialog. But this is only a guess and I have no good way to test right now. Sorry for false hope.