Delete coloured box in roadmap view

Question

Why was this feature removed? I used to be able to right-click, and there were options to remove start date, due date, or both dates. Now those options don't appear (just changing the colour). And even if I delete the dates from the Epic ticket itself, the coloured box stays!

Having no coloured box was useful for Epics that are in the 'backlog' ie. we don't know when we're going to start them yet. Also for Epics that are very long-running (ie. stick around for 6 months or longer) and we don't need the visual cue of when they're starting or ending, we just know they're always happening!

I hope the removal of this useful feature was a bug, and it's being restored soon.

Bill Sheboy · Answer

I wondered if this symptom was sprint-related...I could not see the top of your roadmap image to confirm that.

There was another recent post on this issue of roadmaps and sprints, and when I tried to reproduce that I got a different and unpredictable result: all sprints that children were in for an epic did not appear on the roadmap.  The documentation did not describe this change.

With a team-managed project, I believe you have limited options.  If you are on a paid Jira license, ask your site admin to submit a ticket to Atlassian to clarify what is happening.  They have access to logs users cannot set, and so perhaps can explain this.  https://support.atlassian.com/contact/#/

If this were a company-managed project, you could create a separate Kanban board for the same filter, and that would show the epics as you requested.

Lizzy Cooper · Answer

@Bill Sheboy I am using a basic roadmap in a team-managed project. I have taken a closer look at what is happening.

Our Epics have child cards which fit into sprints. When you put a child card into a sprint, a ribbon appears on a child card. It also populates the ribbon for the Epic. Pictured, neither Epic has either a start date or a due date (they were just created). The child cards have just been put into sprints.

Previously, Epics could have no ribbon while child cards had ribbons. You could right-click on the ribbon, and remove both dates, and it would disappear. Now, it will not, it will stay as long as the child cards are in sprints.

I am guessing this was an intentional change, to stop mis-matched Epic and child card ribbons.

It is unfortunate that this removes the use case for Epics that are ongoing. At least it does not impact the use case where you don't know when you are going to start an Epic.

Bill Sheboy · Answer

Lizzy, are you on the Standard or Premium license for Jira Cloud?  For premium, I believe there is some automatic setting possible for the dates.

I just tried what you note and could not reproduce the symptom for the basic roadmap with Standard license.

The band/stripe appears when one or more of those dates are set.  Have you checked the epic's history to see if something else is setting the dates, such as automation, scripting, etc.?