Epic Related stories do now show up in Backlog

Question

Using Jira Cloud Free, we have imported hundreds of stories that automatically got linked to existing Epics. From the import process, all the stories came in linked as Related to the Epics, not as children. When we view our Backlog and filter using the Epics Pane, these related stories do not get shown in the Backlog.

Is there a way to change this so that the filtered Epic also picks up Related stories?

If this isn't possible, is there a way to mass change the link direction from Related to Child? We cannot re-import the stories at this point, unfortunately.

Thank you for any help you can provide!

Parrish Fessler · Answer

Unfortunately this did not work. I get an error in the JQL filter. Here is the JQL:

issue in linkedIssues(“TestEpic-8”) AND issuetype in standardIssueTypes() and issuetype != Epic

Jira returns an error of:

Issue '“TestEpic-8”' could not be found in function 'linkedIssues'.

Parrish Fessler · Answer

Unfortunately this did not work. I get an error in the JQL filter. Here is the JQL:

issue in linkedIssues(“TestEpic-8”) AND issuetype in standardIssueTypes() and issuetype != Epic

Jira returns an error of:

Issue '“TestEpic-8”' could not be found in function 'linkedIssues'.

Walter Buggenhout · Answer

Hi @Parrish Fessler and welcome to the Community!

To make issues appear as child issues on the timeline, they should be linked to their Epic using the parent field instead of an issue link indeed.

Since you have already imported the issues, it is probably best to use bulk change to update the parent field. It may be a bit tricky and probably one epic at a time. Suppose you have an epic with key MISHAP-1, with the following filter you should be able to find all issues linked to it:

issue in linkedIssues(“MISHAP-1”) AND issuetype in standardIssuetypes and
issuetype != Epic

The last part of the query is to avoid you end up with sub-tasks or other epics in your selection.

Then, near the top right corner locate the ... menu and select Bulk Change

Follow the steps in the wizard that guides you, choose to edit all issues and locate the Parent field. Fill out the epic key you used in the search (MISHAP-1) and perform the update. Repeat for the other epics.

Hope this helps!