Changes to 'Epic' work type

Question

My team has been receiving notice that there will be changes to how Atlassian treats Epics and I want to understand if I need to make any changes to our configuration.

Today, we have a hierarchy set up for work types that is Initiative > Epic > Task > Subtask. We have a few automations that pull our updates into Confluence based on this hierarchy. We do not use the 'epic link' field AT ALL, so I don't think there is risk to anything breaking in our configuration but I would appreciate any guidance on whether or not we need to make any changes. Right now, Initiatives are parents to Epics, and Epics are parents to Tasks.

Arkadiusz Wroblewski · Answer

Hello and Welcome @Sara Szynskie

If the notice your team is getting is about Atlassian’s Epic Link / Parent Link deprecation, then your hierarchy itself does not need to be redesigned.

In Jira Cloud, Epic is still the default level-1 work type for larger pieces of work, and Jira still supports a normal hierarchy where work items sit above and below each other. Atlassian’s current docs also still describe Epic as the default work type for larger bodies of work.

The main change is that Atlassian has been standardizing parent-child relationships around the Parent field.

Deprecation of the Epic Link, Parent Link and other related fields in REST APIs and webhooks - Jira Development / Jira Cloud Announcements - The Atlassian Developer Community

Trudy P Claspill · Answer

Hello @Sara Szynskie

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

Can you provide the text of the notices you are receiving? I have not received any such notices so I can't speak to content that I haven't seen.