Alternative to assigning 1 issue to multiple epics-Jira Projects

Question

Hi Jira community,

I am new to jira so bear with me :)

Ideally, I would live to be able to assign one issue to multiple epics. However, since you can't and I now need to figure out the best work around.

Our team is new to jira and are using it for project work. Our hierarchy is initiative, epic (large body work), story (projects), task. All communications for each story (our projects) require review and approval before they are sent out.

Currently all that info is stored on a spreadsheet, categorized, and used by people to upload, assign date, and approve communications before they are sent.

Ideally, we need to have one central place for our comms person to go in jira and see all the communications for all the multiple project in one place.

I was considering unconventional approaches such as:

add a communication column to our workflow, add a dependency to the stories (depends on communications) add a comms component to the story when created, this way it is easy to filter and track, or create another board pointing to the same project that filters all the communications.

I'm thinking the cleanest option is the component.

Does anyone have any advice?

Thank you!

Bill Sheboy · Answer

I suggest trying an example Story with links to the Epics, and then use it with your normal process to see how it helps.  Then make adjustments from there.

Shawna Bernazzani · Answer

Hi Bill, TY!

I was able to play with the linking. This may work. I think If i create a communications epic and assign it to the person who must review all linked communications, it might work. Not the cleanest approach, though.

The idea is that it is easy for this one person to open jira and see all the communications they need to approve for each project.

When I link them, she can see everything in that story. I might want to explore linking to confluence.

Essentially, they will only be looking at messages being sent to the org regarding the project. So we will need the team to attach all the files for review (which is where this gets messy). If you have any other insights, please LMK. I hope the objective was clear. Thanks again for the help!

Thank you, Shawna

Bill Sheboy · Answer

Hi @Shawna Bernazzani -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

Adding to what Joe suggested...

For an Epic and its child issues (e.g., Story) there is only one parent -> child linkage.  This enforces the idea that an Epic is normally decomposed into a specific set of child issues, and so those cannot be children of another parent.

But you could use Issue Linking to link any number of issues for other relationships, such as linking multiple Epics to the same Story.  However this is not a parent / child relationship, and so you may need extra handling for things like reporting, automation rules, etc.

To learn more about issue linking, please look here: https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/link-issues/

Kind regards,
Bill