Why can't I view sub-tasks for stories in advanced roadmaps?

[Gelbana]

I'm trying to use advanced road-maps to decide when a story is expected to be resolved based on the due dates on its subtasks.

My end goal is to view a parent task and its sub-tasks in a hierarchy view.

I successfully did so for bugs and dev-improvements (I'm not sure if "dev-improvement" is a standard Jira task type or not, but we have it in our system), but not for stories, and I was hoping I can do that for stories too.

The following screenshot shows that when the parent task type is a story, its sub-tasks are hidden.

I can't view the subtasks unless I choose the tasks hierarchy to be sub-tasks to sub-tasks, which hides the parent task!

The only way to view both the task and its sub-tasks is if the task is converted to a bug or a dev-improvement (I didn't try other task types).

So finally, how can I view stories and their sub-tasks as I can for bugs or dev-improvements? Is it a matter of configuration?

[Dave · Accepted solution]

Hi @Gel ,

It sounds like your INC-24807 issue type is configured at the Epic hierarchy level - therefore sub-tasks won't be displayed for them as it breaks the hierarchy model. This is why they do appear when you convert it to a story level issue.

The reason is that there are actually 3 relationship types - sub-task link, epic link and parent link. The last is for anything above epic and is introduced with Advanced Roadmaps. However if you have an Epic (level) and a Sub-Task (level) issue linked via the sub-task relationship then you are skipping the Story (level) and the sub-task is ignored.

I hope that makes sense, let me know if you need more information,

Regards,

Dave

[Gelbana]

Yup, that was the problem. I'm wondering if there is a configuration to loosen that restriction.

Thanks a lot, @Dave.

[Dave]

Unfortunately not, @Gelbana. There are ongoing discussions around this topic but no concrete decisions have been made on if we will make any changes in this area. However, I'll share this thread with the team looking at this and they might reach out for more info,

Regards,

Dave

[Sasha]

I agress with Dave. I have lots issues that I would like to use with a portfolio plan. 

However, to view the epics with their stories and sub-tasks in an plan is difficult. 

We are using the following filter:

project = 123 AND issuetype in (Story, Sub-task) AND "Epic Link" = 123-25872 ORDER BY Rank ASC

Only the stories appear in the plan.

[Petter Gonçalves]

Hello @Gelbana

Thank you for reaching out.

It's hard to tell precisely what could be the root cause of the problem without checking your site a little bit further, however, most of the times that a sub-task is not properly displayed under a specific issue type in AR plans is caused by a wrong hierarchy added in the issue plan. Allow me to further explain it:

The child relationship of issues is different than the sub-task relationship. Usually, the most usual relation configured in Jira cloud is the following:

Initiative -> Epic -> Default issue type (Bug, Story, Task) -> Sub-task

Using the hierarchy above, the sub-task issue should be properly displayed in your plan under the default issue types, however, the change of the hierarchy levels of one of the issue types might cause the sub-tasks to don't be directly under the issue type displayed in the plan, so they will not be displayed in the plan view.

That being said, I suggest checking your hierarchy levels looking for any differences you have between bugs (Where the nested sub-tasks are properly displayed) and Stories (Where the sub-tasks are not displayed). You can check the video below for more details about Advanced Roadmaps Hierarchies:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1TvgkwGnLE

Let us know if this information helps.

[Gelbana]

Thanks a lot, @Petter Gonçalves, that was helpful.

[Sarosa Rosasa1234]

Didn't help for me as we are using the older Jira version where the same problem exists. :-(

[James Bellamy]

I had this problem. For me the issue was that the sub-tasks were not inheriting all attributes from the parent, and so did not qualify for the filter set up for the plan.

In my case the filter on the plan included a specific fix version, and I needed to manually re-apply the fixversion to my subtasks, and then bingo, they appeared on the plan.

[Gelbana]

You can avoid this by using sprints because subtasks inherit the parent issues sprint.

That's of course only if your team is sprint-based.

[Srinivaas]

that's correct. Inheriting is not happening for certain fields for sub tasks. These inheritance to be manually decided?