Viewing epics, tasks and subtasks

Question

For our users, we would like to create a good overview in Jira.

We have a company-managed business project in Jira Cloud, which we use to track (short-ish) projects for a department.

Every project in that department, is an epic in this jira-project. An epic contains a set of tasks and some tasks even have subtask.

We would like to have a list of the uncompleted epic's, preferably without any tasks or subtasks visible.

Then we would like to be able to easily pick one of those epic's, and view all the tasks ánd subtasks within that epic.

We can create the first view in the list-view, that is an easy step.

To get a a view of all tasks and sub-tasks within an epic, we haven't found a solution yet. When we click an epic, it will show all tasks, but not the subtasks unfortunately.
A different approach would be the use of a filter on the view, but the amount of epics and the not-so-tech-savvy users, it will not be that user friendly to create custom filters for every epic.

Any ideas on how to create a good user experience for working with these epics?

Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira · Answer

Hi @RedBottle

if you're open to solutions from the Atlassian Marketplace, you may want to have a look at the app that my team and I are working on: JXL for Jira.

JXL is a full-fledged spreadsheet/table view for your work items (issues) that allows viewing, inline-editing, sorting, and filtering by all your work item fields, much like you’d do in e.g. Excel or Google Sheets. It also comes with a number of advanced features, including the ability to view your full work item hierarchy - from epics down to sub-tasks - in just one click.

This is how it looks in action:

As you can see, you can drill selectively expand your epics, and drill down only into the ones that you are interested in. As every JXL sheet is powered by a JQL statement or saved filter, you have full control over which work items should be included in your view.

I should add that JXL can do much more than the above: From support for configurable work item hierarchies (e.g., based on work item links), to work item grouping by any work item field(s), sum-ups, or conditional formatting.

Any questions just let me know,

Best,

Hannes

Mary from Planyway · Answer

Hi @RedBottle

If you consider third-party apps, I can tell you more about the timeline option.

In Planyway for Jira you can visualize the timeline by Epics and view all work items and subtasks depending on the set dates. At the same time, you can view the same in the list view on the right.

Danut M _StonikByte_ · Answer

Hi @RedBottle,

To get a a view of all tasks and sub-tasks within an epic you could try the Jira's List view available in each project.

If this is not enough for you, you could look for an app (plugin) on Atlassian Marketplace that offers advanced capabilities.

In case you want to try an app, our Great Gadgets app offers some very useful gadgets for visualizing the epics and tracking their progress.

For example, with the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) gadget you can visualize the epics along with their child issues (including sub-tasks).

And with the Pivot Table & Pivot Chart gadget offered by the same app you can display the epics with their child and also calculate and display the progress based on their tasks and sub-tasks.

For more details, see also this article: https://community.atlassian.com/forums/App-Central-articles/How-to-display-the-progress-of-Epics-or-Initiatives-in-Jira-or/ba-p/2858840

If you have any questions about our gadgets, feel free to contact us at support@stonikbyte.com.

Danut.