Do epic names have to be spelled and spaced exactly (across boards/projects) for reports?

[Susan Fessel]

I'm creating a new structure where Projects are teams, and Boards are the projects across the teams.  The epic will live in the project. We have a lot of cross functional work meaning Board 1, Board 2 and Board 3 will use the link to the same epics to manage dependencies etc.    

My question is this: do epics need to be spelled and spaced EXACTLY the same to show up on epic reporting?  If someone mis-spells an epic, for example, Dashboard vs. DashBoard or inQR vs. INQR or Dash - Board vs. Dash-Board, will that impact pulling the epic report?  Would the epics need to be spelled and spaced exactly the same across the boards and Projects? 

We have to do cleanup of current processes/tickets so I need to figure out if we need to do it or not to make the Epics match.  And also to ensure process moving forward.  Thanks.

[Scott Theus · Accepted solution]

Hi @Susan Fessel,

Did you ever get an answer to this? I'm curious to see how you resolved it. I'm also trying to picture the structure and how the epics fit into it so I can help answer your question if it's still open. 

From what I'm reading in your post...

If you set up an epic named "Dashboard" in project A and an epic named "Dashboard" in project B you still have two separate epics that will report as individuals not as a single conglomerate of the two issues because the actual issue ID and project key fields are different.

Instead, you can continue to let the epics live in the projects, but don't duplicate them between projects. Use the Epic Link field to connect your stories to the epics; that can cross projects.

For example

• PRoject A has Epic 1: Dashboards.
• Project B has Epic 2: INQR. 
• Project A has 6 stories; three linked to Dashboards and three to INQR
• Project B has 4 stories; two linked to Dashboards, two to INQR, and one to Epic 3: Service.

When you run your epic reports, the stories linked to the epics will pull in, regardless of what project they live in.

Does this help?

-Scott

[Susan Fessel]

Yes @Scott Theus that is correct, we'll use the epic link to connect them.  Thank you. 

We are using platform teams as the Jira Project and the initiatives will be the boards that contain epics that belong to just these platform teams and that are linked across to other project teams.  However, now I'm not so sure that it's not easier to build these "initiatives" as projects too!

My spelling concern was resolved - I'm just trying to figure out best set up now that I've built it out in a sandbox.

Project A = Data Team with Board 1 Epic A, Epic AA, Board 2 Epic B, Epic BB, Board 3 Epic D, Epic E

Project B = Consumer team with Board 1 Epic M, Epic AA (linked) board 2 Epic O, Epic B (linked), Board 3 Epic D (Linked), Epic S

I hope this makes sense.  It's really hard to type out a diagram.

Thanks again for your response. Super helpful.