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Hierarchy - adding additional level to work type structures

Leonid de la Cruz

I'm new to my organization is has started to adopt Jira to manage the delivery. They started using the default work type structure and I was suggesting for a few Key boarder initiatives to add an additional level to help track and manage their work, but was told by the admin that they would have to apply this across the board and could not just apply to a few of the projects.

Looking for guidance if there is a way to just apply the changes in a way that would only affect selected projects to assist in the transition process.

New Proposed Structure:
EPIC < Feature < Story < Tasks

Accepted answers

John Funk

Hi Leonid - Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

Be aware that if you change the Work Item Hierarchy, it will be changed for the entire organization and there is only one Hierarchy. That being said you can do the following:

To Create Epic work item type as Level 2

Rename current Level 1 name from Epic to Feature
Click the Epic dropdown in the Jira Work Item Types field and select Feature
Go back to Work Item Types menu option and create an Epic work item type
Come back to Work Item Type Hierarchy menu option
Add Epic as Level 2 in hierarchy
Save Changes

The work item type hierarchy should now be structured as:
o Epic
o Feature
o Story
o Subtask

All comments

Jack Brickey

Hi @Leonid de la Cruz , welcome to the Community!

There are a lot of posts in the Community discussing this, so for more details you may wish to search and review.

In Standard and free plan tiers you have three levels:

Epic
Task/Story note- you could create a new type called feature if desired
Sub-task

some users use Epic to represent features.

In Premium plan tier you have five levels:

Program
Initiative
Epic
Task/Story
Sub-task

Leonid de la Cruz

Understood and thank you for the quick reply. We are using the Premium plan but it only has the 3 level hence why I was asking if we can apply these level settings at a project level?

The response from the admin team is if we make the change now it would break everything currently in place in the whole instance vs just my project.

Michael Yaroshefsky - Visor for Jira

hey @Leonid de la Cruz welcome to Atlassian Community. As Jack said this is quite a common question so don't worry you're not alone!

Hierarchies are set globally, i.e. you can't have different levels for specific projects.

Our app (Visor) has a bi-directional integration with Jira, but sits outside Jira itself, which means you can use it to view/organize your Jira project data outside of the constraints of Jira itself.

Assuming your admin won't budge and modify the global hierarchy setup, here's what you can do:

1. Ask your admin to create a new custom issue type (Features) but don't add it to the hierarchy.

2. Import your Jira project/s into Visor and when asked, select: "Maintain nesting from Jira"

3. Use the drag-and-drop table view in Visor to set your issues into this structure EPIC < Feature < Story < Tasks

4. Then before you sync Visor with Jira again, click on Connections > Sync & Import > Show data structure options > select "Ignore nesting rom Jira"

5. Sync back updates to/from Jira and Visor, you have your custom hierarchy for your project/s in Visor, without affecting the wider Jira instance.

Pricing & More Details:

Table and Board views are included in Visor's Free plan, so you could do this completely free.

You can also try the Visor Team plan for 14-days for free (no-commitment, no credit card). The Team plan includes Gantt charts, roadmaps, dashboards etc. and unlimited free viewers.

See the screenshot below where I showed someone else how to do this in Visor with their Jira data - note the "Feature Number One" issue, nested under the epic.

Our marketplace listing; https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1226209/visor-spreadsheet-gantt-chart-for-jira-with-excel-export?tab=overview&hosting=cloud

Screenshot 2025-04-23 at 5.58.18 PM.png

John Funk

Hi Leonid - Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

Be aware that if you change the Work Item Hierarchy, it will be changed for the entire organization and there is only one Hierarchy. That being said you can do the following:

To Create Epic work item type as Level 2

Rename current Level 1 name from Epic to Feature
Click the Epic dropdown in the Jira Work Item Types field and select Feature
Go back to Work Item Types menu option and create an Epic work item type
Come back to Work Item Type Hierarchy menu option
Add Epic as Level 2 in hierarchy
Save Changes

The work item type hierarchy should now be structured as:
o Epic
o Feature
o Story
o Subtask

Mark Singer_dqwvr3

Hello - We are currently exploring this option, but are unable to deselect the 'Epic' option from the level 1 work type drop down. Did you run into any conflicts when creating the new Epic work type and having that co-exist with the old Epic work type? Since we can't deselect the old epic and changes made are across our entire instance, we are hesitant to test.

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