Linked Issues

Question

Good morning everyone, I hope you are doing well! They are asking me if there is the possibility of restricting the linking options of the issues, let me explain myself better...when an issue is linked, options such as "is blocked by", "blocks", "is child of", "is parent" is parent of" "clones" etc.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

Hi Nicolas,

Issue links are a global list and cannot be restricted directly.  Jira will always offer a user the full list of issue link types to choose from when they try to link issues.

Your admins, can, of course, edit the list of link types you have, so if you delete the ones you don't want, the list on offer will be shorter.  I always recommend people keep the list as simple as is useful, avoid similar link types.  For example, don't have a list that includes "blocks" and "is a dependency of" - you're saying the issues have the same sort of relationship in two ways - both phrases tell us "this issue needs to be dealt with before we can deal with the linked issue", so pick one.

Some issue link types may be being used by apps, so you should check on those before you delete link types an app may need (Big Picture for example, last time I looked, it used links to handle nesting and dependencies)

The only thing you could do would be to create conditions or validators on your transitions that check what issue links there are and block the transition if someone has put the "wrong type of link" on an issue.

Dave Rosenlund (Trundl) · Answer

Thanks for clarifying (above), @Nicolas Mayans.

As others have said, the ability for users to use issue links is governed by your Jira permission scheme. If they have permission to work with the issue they are going to have permission to add issue links also.

However, you can decide which link types are available, or not.

See the link included in my answer above for a complete guide on issue links. Within that page you will find:

Add, edit, and delete an issue type scheme

I suspect you'll find what you're looking for, or close to it anyway, in that area.

-dave

Nicolas Mayans_7196q1 · Answer

I understand that this type of link is for information only, so I want to know if it is possible to reduce the number of options or if that information cannot be edited. And if I chose a criterion it would be by user, role or group.

Thank you!