Add field for Epic color in teams-managed business project

Question

Hi everyone,

I am new to Jira and I've googled and read a lot about adding epic colours, but so far I haven't been able to find the answer to my actual question.

I would like to add the field "epic color". However, I'm not sure if it just doesn't work because I'm working with a team-managed project business project?
In all my searches so far, I have seen the tip to change the whole thing in the backlog or something similar (so it all relates to software projects). Is it even possible to use Epic colours in a team-managed business project? When I go to "Customise and configure tasks" and click on "Switch to custom fields", I find the "epic color" field via the search. "Contexts" also show me that this field is available for the Epic task type in all projects. However, there is no project under "Projects" because I have not yet managed to use it in my project. Does anyone have any tips? Or can you answer the question of whether what I am trying to do is even possible?

Overall, I'm a bit confused by the different functionalities of software project and business project. I would say mine is a mix of both, which is why I chose Business Project, but then again some things only seem to be available in Software Projects. Since I don't have Jira Enterprise, the setting options are probably additionally limited in that regard.

Many thanks in advance
Mona

Mischke, Mona · Answer

Hey,

sorry, I had to switch the language of my atlassian account to english to see how the "tag" I use is called in english. Apparently I used the wrong word -  I use "labels" to assign the different epics to different categories.

For example if I use my filters on the page "Issues" there is no column with the label.

To be more general - I need somehow a workaround to simulate another hierarchy, to sort the different epics into categories. The more I can sort the epics depending on the different labels they have, the better. If there would be a visual overview that would be a dream. But I guess, that is not possible?

If I would switch to company managed project (they just use software project) I guess I will loose way to many settings, fields and customized things and so on from my current project, so that this is not a solution either.

But many thanks for the overview about the different functionalities! The next project I'll start (if there is ever any) I will keep that in mind and maybe I should use another project type then.

Trudy P Claspill · Answer

In a Business/Work Management project there is no native functionality to add Colors to the cards displayed on the board. But you can add some custom fields to the card displays. If you are using the Category field in the issues, for example, you can add that field to the card display.

In Team Managed project the Epic Color field is not used. That field was only used in Company Managed projects, and is now in the process of being deprecated anyhow.

When you say this "tag I can't see on the first view", to what view are you referring?

Also, what type of field is that "tag" field you are using?

Overall, I'm a bit confused by the different functionalities of software project and business project. I would say mine is a mix of both, which is why I chose Business Project, but then again some things only seem to be available in Software Projects.

Jira Software projects were designed to support teams needing to use Agile methodologies (i.e. Scrum and Kanban) traditionally used by software development teams. Jira Business/Work Management projects were originally designed to provide a "simpler" set of features for teams not needing the Agile methodologies, and more oriented to supporting business processes than software development processes.

One area of difference is:

- Business projects have just one native board display, and it shows a card for every issue that has not been "done" for 2 weeks or longer.

- Software projects can have multiple boards. Software projects can have a separate Backlog screen associated with a board so that only the "active" work is shown on the board while all the other work is segregated to the Backlog. Software projects can have boards based on the Scrum agile methodology, using Sprints to time-box work that a team commits to completing.

Another difference is that Business projects had a Calendar view and Software projects do not.

In the past it has been possible to subscribe to just the Jira Work Management product. When that was done, none of the additional features of the Jira Software product were available. Or you could subscribe to the Jira Software product and get both Software and Business/Work Management functionality. Atlassian announced at Team '24 that the two products would be merged into a single product going forward. As part of that, functionality previously only available in Business projects, like the List view, is being made available in the Software projects, and some functionality available only in Software projects is going to be made available in Business projects.

Currently there is still a documentation set for Jira Work Management and another for Jira Software, but I suspect these might get merged in the future.

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-work-management/resources/

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/resources/

Mischke, Mona · Answer

I wanted to get a better overview over my topics. I have a really big and complex project, which I wanted to manage in Jira. 
There are like 5 general categories which are in the hierarchy above the epics (but without enterprise I cannot add another hierarchy). Therefore I used the tags to give every epic the category which it belongs to. But this tag I can't see on the first view. So a color for every tag would be very helpful.