The Epic panel of the Kanban backlog does not take into consideration the Kanban board sub-filter

Question

I have a Kanban board setup.

I have a Kanban backlog that with an Epics panel.

The Epics panel shows Epics from multiple projects. This is because the Epic panel does not take into account the Kanban board sub-filter where I specify the given project that I'm interested in.

I can solve the problem by changing the main Filter Query, but I don't want to do this, because then I need to change all Filter Queries for all my projects (right now, I use one base filter query for all the boards).

Why doesn't the Epic panel also take into account the sub-filter? Is it possible for the Epic panel to also use the Kanban sub-filter?

Any help on this is appreciated!

Andy Heinzer · Accepted Answer

Hi Jordan,

Thanks for explaining in details what you are looking to do here.  I understand that the sub-filter on a kanban board is not working the way you expect here in regards to what epics appear in that epic panel.

However the sub-filter is only designed to restrict what issues appear on that board as cards (stories, tasks, bugs, etc).  There is some info on how this sub-filter is expected to work over in Configure filters. Epics occupy a unique role in regards to boards.  They never really appear on the board as a card. Instead their functionality is a bit different, even though they do exist within Jira as an issue type.

While I have not found a previous request that exactly matches yours here, I did come across JSWCLOUD-18474 : quick filters on the backlog to apply to the Epics panel as well as the issues.  It does not directly deal with the sub-filter, but the quick filters instead in much the same manner.

Perhaps there is another work-around here that can help.  I understand that you use the same filter across multiple boards and don't want to have to change that everytime you want to remove an epic from a particular board.   One possible way around this would be to create multiple saved filters as outlined in Save your search as a filter first.  Let's say you saved a filter that only has one epic you want to see there in a format such as

issuekey=XYZ-1

For the sake of this example, let's say that XYZ-1 is the epic you want to see here and that when you save this filter, it is then given an id value of 12345 (you can see this id in the browser URL when you save the filter)

From there you can then adjust the board filter from say the example of

project=ABC OR issuekey=XYZ-1 order by Rank ASC

into something more like

project=ABC OR filter=12345 order by Rank ASC

Logically these are the same results to return on the board, but the difference here is that you then don't need to edit the board configuration to change which epics appear here.  Instead you can now just edit filter 12345 to include the specific epics you want to see on that board.

Maybe this approach is helpful, maybe not.  But if you would care to share your current board filter here, perhaps I can help craft a more helpful JQL example that is pertinent to your specific environment.  Granted you would likely have to update all the board filters at least once more to encompass this new convention of referencing saved filters in JQL, but it might help you to manage this differently and more in line with your expectations.

Let me know your thoughts.

Andy