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Ticket Hierarchy on Jira Cloud

Jerome Soucy

Morning Atlassian-ites(?)

I've been searching for a solution but could not find a compelling answer in the forums and online so far so, at the risk of asking a question that may have been answered but I failed to see it, I want to define a specific ticket structure: Epic->Feature->UserStory->Task. Alas, the only ticket I can use as a parent is Epic. I picked my brain to see how I could add that structure but... all points to it not being supported... is that the case?

I mean, the hierarchy of tickets is a baseline to lock the structure and not have tickets that end up where they do not belong and I fail to see how I can implement that...

Any insights?

Oh, yeah, I don't have access to plugins from Marketplace... this is my client's Jira and I can't add/remove plugins willy-nilly

Accepted answers

Staffan Redelius

Hi @Jerome Soucy and welcome to the community!

In Jira free, and Standard plan Epic is the highest level and the hierarchy is limited to three levels.

- Epic (level 1)
- Story, Task, Incident etc. (Level 0)
- Subtask (Level -1)

It is not possible to add additional levels between Epics and Stories

If you upgrade to Jira Premium you can add additional levels above the Epic level. What you need to do in that case is to rename the Epic to Feature and create a new level above Level 1 called Epic.

I have helped some customers who has the hierarchy Initative->Epic-Story->Subtask by creating the issuetype "Initiative" on level 0 and use a specific link-type (Realizes<->Realized by) to define the relationship.

It does not create a hierarchy in true sense but you can at least find what Epics are related to a specific initative.

So, maybe not the answer you were looking for but i hope this can give you some alternatives to explore further.

Best regards,
/Staffan

All comments

Florian Bonniec

Hi @Jerome Soucy

Indeed the JIRA hierarchy cannot reflect the one you want.

The hierarchy is defined in the Work Type hierarchy section from bottom to top:

Sub-Task

Story

Epic

You can then add other level on top of Epic but cannot update the base on the hierarchy.

Using another hierarchy will prevent your users to leverage some jira feature so I always recommend to stick with what Atlassian has implemented.

In case, a custom hierarchy is really needed, the solution I use is Structure but it's an app.

Regards

Nikola Perisic

Hi @Jerome Soucy

Did you look into the out-of-the-box Work item hierarchy? You can only add the levels TOP of the Epic, not below it. For everything else, yes, you would need plugins from the marketplace.

Screenshot 2025-12-05 at 15.02.06.png

Staffan Redelius

Hi @Jerome Soucy and welcome to the community!

In Jira free, and Standard plan Epic is the highest level and the hierarchy is limited to three levels.

- Epic (level 1)
- Story, Task, Incident etc. (Level 0)
- Subtask (Level -1)

It is not possible to add additional levels between Epics and Stories

If you upgrade to Jira Premium you can add additional levels above the Epic level. What you need to do in that case is to rename the Epic to Feature and create a new level above Level 1 called Epic.

It does not create a hierarchy in true sense but you can at least find what Epics are related to a specific initative.

So, maybe not the answer you were looking for but i hope this can give you some alternatives to explore further.

Best regards,
/Staffan

Ivan Manolov _Appfire_

Hello @Jerome Soucy

Welcome to the Community!

As mentioned by @Staffan Redelius and and @Florian Bonniec modifying the default hierarchy might not achieve exactly what you need and is limited in a way.

I understand this is your customer's Jira and apps might not be that easy to install but if they are 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 Jira data that allows viewing, inline-editing, copy-pasting, sorting, and filtering by all your work items' fields, much like you’d do in e.g. Excel, Google Sheets, Smartsheet, or Airtable. It also comes with a number of great features, including highly configurable issue hierarchies. Your hierarchy levels can be based on Jira built-in parent/child relationships (like task/sub-task, or epic/story), but they can also be based on issue links.

This is an example of how this looks in action:

This is just an example. You’re totally free in how you structure your work, e.g. visualising features under epics and user stories under features is no problem at all.

Any questions just let me know.

Best,
Ivan

Rahul_RVS

Hi @Jerome Soucy

Welcome to the community !!

To overcome the limitation of standard hierarchy, you can use Issue Links to create your own customized hierarchy. This will not impact your standard Jira hierarchy. However you would need a custom built solution to view it in a tree view . If you would be interested in a mktplace solution to view linked issues in a tree / hierarchy view, I can suggest our app

Issue Hierarchy

The app allows you to view your project issue hierarchy created with issue links in a tree view. You can view %complete progress at each parent level. It rolls up the time tracking fields, story point or numeric fields at each parent level. The app can be added to a dashboard as well.

Disclaimer : I am one of the app team member

Links Hierarchy - Create Linked issue animation.gif

Olga Cheban _TitanApps_

hi @Jerome Soucy !

Unfortunately, Jira doesn't allow you to insert custom levels between the default hierarchy levels (Epic (1) -> Task/Story/Bug (0) -> Subtask (-1)).

However, you can add custom levels above Epic if you have access to Jira Plans (you do if you have a Premium or Enterprise plan). So maybe you can achieve the structure you need by playing with the naming a little bit.

For more details on how to configure this, please see my article Advanced Roadmaps Hierarchy Configuration Guide 2025.

Another alternative is to use checklists to add one more hierarchy level below the subtask.

As a result, your hierarchy will look like this:

Epic (1) -> Feature/Task/Story/Bug (0) -> Subtask (as User Story) (-1) -> Checklist items (as Tasks) (-2)

Here's an example of what it looks like:

You can add such checklists with the help of our solution, Smart Checklist for Jira.
It allows you to use checklists as a substitute for tasks or subtasks. For example, you can:

- tag responsible people

- add deadlines

- set custom workflow statuses for each checklist item

- add links, images, and details to the expandable sections below each checklist item

- save checklists as reusable templates and auto-add them to standard tasks

I hope this helps!

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