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JQL Filter to find Epics that have no Issues (i.e. empty Epics)

Glyn Costello

Hi,

I'd like to know how I can use a JQL query to collect Epics which do not yet have any issues linked to them.

It seems that I can find issues which have links out to an Epic, but not necessarily the other way round.

I'm looking for something like:

IssueType = Epic AND HasChildren = No

Please help?

Thanks,

Glyn

Accepted answers

All comments

unknown

"Epic Link" is EMPTY for issues *NOT* linked to an epic

"Epic Link" is not EMPTY for issues linked to an epic

Glyn Costello

Hi, this doesn't really answer the question. Your first query will show my issues without an epic link. I am trying to find Epics with no stories in them.

Jennifer McVicker

I'm looking for the answer to this too...or rather, the reverse. I have created a board that pulls stories and epics from multiple projects, and I want to ONLY pull in epics that contain one or more stories that display on my board. For instance, an epic may have three stories but those three stories are filtered out by my board filter, so the epic shows up on the backlog screen, but contains no stories on my board.

Emanuel Felix Tunbjer_jih9fn

Hi @Jennifer McVicker

If you are on a Server JIRA you can use the add-on ScriptRunner for JIRA from Adaptavist, to easily create queries around Epics:

issueFunction in hasLinks("is Epic of") - to show all epics that has stories defined

issueFunction not in hasLinks("is Epic of") - well, to show all epics that has no stories defined

Cheers

Glyn Costello

Hi, I'm aware it can be done with script runner, however it is not part of our installation. Based on the responses I thinking that there's no JQL query that can handle this kind of request...

unknown

I'm looking for this as well finding jQL to find Empty Epics to clean up Agile Board view of epics that are no longer needed and to provide easily readable list to Lead to review before closing.

Jennifer McVicker

Awesome! We do have ScriptRunner installed on our Server instance. I'll check that out. Thanks Emanuel!

Matt Boerner

Is there a way to hide epics without any associated stories given the currently applied quick filters? That query hides ONLY those epics without ANY associated stories.

nils_karlstrom

This is now possible to do if you have the add-on JQL Search Extensions.

issuetype=Epic and issuesInEpicCount=0

unknown

This is a paid add-on. .

nils_karlstrom

Yes, but it's one of the only options. It's not possible with standard JQL.

Arthur Lee

Oddly, there was an answer using JQL Search Extensions above that didn't work for me. Instead, I had to use this JQL for my search. Adding this here in case it helps some other folks...took me a while to get this working.

issue not in epicOf("'Epic Link' is not empty")) ORDER BY rank

I use Structure as well; in my one filter, I wanted to show all the other issues as well, so I had JQL something similar to the following:

issuetype not in (sub-task,test, epic) or 
(issuetype = Epic and issue not in epicOf("'Epic Link' is not empty"))

Egil Sandfeld

Perfect, I made this work for me when I had to find Epics without stories:

not issueFunction in epicsOf("'Epic Link' != null")

Romans Ļubļinskis

Not in the form of query (which I would also like to have), but other way around:

While in Backlog of particular project, click on each (yep...) Epic and check what's inside in the summary below an Epic name.