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Stop epics from being automatically added to the sprint

Adam Curry

Hi there -

We currently use epics to track multi-sprint priorities. You can imagine this as "launch product A" which might take 3-4 sprints.

The issue is that whenever we assign the stories inside of our epic to the sprint, it automatically places the epic in the sprint as well. This means at the end of each sprint, we have a bunch of leftover epics that are "incomplete" and thus pulled forward into the next sprint.

This is messing up a number of things - such as tracking velocity and managing boards properly. I am pulling my hair out trying to answer: how do I stop epics from appearing in the sprint?

There is no value for the epic card to be included in our sprints or sprint analytics. They will never have story points and will always span multiple sprints. Please help me, if possible. Thanks so much.

Accepted answers

Trudy P Claspill

Hello @Adam Curry

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

The addition of the Epic to the sprint is not a native function of Jira. Somebody has customized your Jira instance to do that. It could be happening because of an Automation Rule, or some other functionality.

Review the History information for such an Epic. There should be an entry there for the change of the Sprint field when the Epic got added to the sprint. Does it say who made the change? It could say a user or it might say "Automation for Jira". The latter is an absolute indicator that an Automation rule made the change. When an Automation rule executes it can alternately execute under the identity of a user, so if the history shows a real user name it still may have been done by an Automation rule.

When viewing the Epic find the Automation panel on the bottom right. Expand that panel then click the Refresh button.

Screenshot 2023-12-08 at 11.39.26 AM.png

That should show a list of Automation rules that have executed against that Epic.

Screenshot 2023-12-08 at 11.42.58 AM.png

You can click on those links to go to the rule details and determine then if one of those rules is setting the Sprint field.

Also check the same for a child story that has been added to a sprint to see if there is a rule executing there that is causing the change to the parent epic.

All comments

Trudy P Claspill

Hello @Adam Curry

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

When viewing the Epic find the Automation panel on the bottom right. Expand that panel then click the Refresh button.

Screenshot 2023-12-08 at 11.39.26 AM.png

That should show a list of Automation rules that have executed against that Epic.

Screenshot 2023-12-08 at 11.42.58 AM.png

You can click on those links to go to the rule details and determine then if one of those rules is setting the Sprint field.

Also check the same for a child story that has been added to a sprint to see if there is a rule executing there that is causing the change to the parent epic.

Adam Curry

This is it! Thank you so much!

Theresa Gerhäuser

Hi ,
I am trying hard to get exactly this automation working, that whenever I move a story to a sprint that the linked Epic also gets mapped to the sprint.

I would be very interested in how to create the automation rule to achieve this.

Thanks

Trudy P Claspill

Hello @Theresa Gerhäuser

Generally Epics should not be added to sprints. Sprints should contain only the issues that you are committing to completing within the sprint. Epics typically take longer than the duration of a sprint to complete.

What problem are you trying to solve by adding Epics to Sprints?

Given that this post is not about adding Epics to sprints, but rather about stopping the automatic addition of Epics to sprints, you should open your own new Question post to get assistance with your query.

Note also that the only people alerted when you add to an existing post are the original author, the people who responded to it, and anybody that elected to Watch it. Creating a brand new Question will get your question added to the first page of the Questions list and get it wider visibility in the community.

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