Beyond epics: Flexible naming has landed!

[#1]

Back in December 2021, we unveiled plans towards providing teams with the flexibility to shape Jira to the way you work, starting with the name of your epics in company-managed projects.

By introducing flexible naming of epics, we aimed to allow you to use your preferred terminology for epics to create consistent naming in Jira Software Cloud.

How it started 👀

So, why did we start with epics? We knew that many teams using Safe Agile Framework (SAFe) were struggling because they were unable to reflect their issue hierarchy in Jira Software Cloud, namely Features as the parent of stories.

Many non-software teams would also benefit from terminology that better reflects their work, e.g. campaign, candidate, etc.

By providing more flexibility around the naming of epics and greater control over the issue type hierarchy, we’d unlock value for not just software teams, but all teams in Jira.

Control your issue type hierarchy 🛎️

Our first milestone involved shifting the issue type hierarchy configuration from within Plans to its new home in the global Jira admin settings: ⚙️ Settings > Issues > Issue hierarchy.

This means that teams using Free and Standard Jira are now able to manage their issue hierarchy, up to the epic level – previously only available to Premium customers.

You can now rename and add issue types to the epic level in your site’s issue hierarchy. Any changes made to the epic level are then reflected throughout all company-managed projects in your site.

For example, if you’ve renamed the epic level to Feature, the backlog will now contain a Feature panel, rather than the existing Epic panel.

Say hi to the new Parent field 👋

As part of these updates, we introduced the new Parent field in company-managed projects.

This field replaces the existing Epic link and Parent link fields, and provides a more consistent experience across all project types.

The new Parent field has now been implemented across Jira, including when you create new issues, view the details of your issues, edit your workflows, and set new automations.

We’ve also added the ability to add a parent directly from your issue’s breadcrumb – consistent with how you work in team-managed projects – and made changes to epic fields to more closely align your experience across your projects.

Our early access beta program ⚡️

In July '22, we invited customers to join our early access beta program. Over the next year, participants engaged with our team through the Beta Community Group, offering valuable feedback and insights in real-time.

Late last year we opened applications to our beta program for all customers to try out the new Parent field, and received an overwhelming response.

Ultimately, 130 customers ended up participating in this second phase of our beta, trialing the new field and sharing their thoughts as we hit the final stretch of the project.

Ready to launch 🚀

Fast forward to now. Earlier this year, we celebrated the culmination of nearly 2 years of development with the rollout of the final stages of flexible naming of epics to all Jira customers.

This release marks a significant leap forward in making Jira adaptable for all teams, no matter the framework they use.

Thank you to the Jira community for your engagement and feedback on each of our updates. Your input was vital in shaping the success of the project 🌟

[Daniel Franz - JXL]

Hate to say it but the culmination here is that you broke our our backlog. Any attempt at showing the epic panel results in an error flag: "Something's gone wrong. Refresh the page and try again. ERROR: 1SJ8SGG"

The inside of the "Epic" menu (not sure why it's called that again because we renamed epics) up in the page header says "Your project has no Epic". Yeah I know because we renamed them.

[Irene]

Hey @Daniel Franz - JXL ! Hope you are well! Would love to find out more about this problem, that's odd indeed. We need to dig into that error problem further. Are you able to lodge a support ticket and give support access to your site so the team can troubleshoot? 

The Epic menu should also be renamed accordingly if you have updated the Hierarchy level name (Not the issue type name). Like the below screenshot here where I've renamed mine to Feature. We can look into that at the same time with the error flag in one support ticket.

[Jimi Wikman]

Just changed this and it worked very well. It took a little while before the epic were renamed in the backlog row, but beyond that everything looks great!

[Daniel Franz - JXL]

@Irene for security reasons we won't be able to allow Atlassian staff to access our data.

What's causing the error is that the request to /jsw2/graphql?operation=EpicPanelEpics fails with an HTTP431 (Request Header Fields Too Large). Logging out and back in to my Atlassian account made the problem go away.

[Irene]

@Daniel Franz - JXL , glad that the problem go away after you logged out. Thanks for that error details, will pass it on to be investigated.

[Daniel Franz - JXL]

@Irene yes please do. HTTP431 (Request Header Fields Too Large). The error is back now. I can't use the panel in the backlog anymore unless I log out an back in every few hours. Please fix.

[Irene]

@Daniel Franz - JXL I was informed that this is a cookie problem, where too much data is stored in cookies, so you need to log out to clear it. Seeing that this error is back (and sounds like it's back regularly?), can you please raise a support ticket for this?

This can be done without providing access to the instance. This will ensure the right team to look into and prioritise this matter. Thanks.

[Irene]

@Daniel Franz - JXL , I have received further clarification. So this is a known issue that has been resolved just recently. For those users who are impacted, you only need to take 1 step to stop it from happening again: clear up the browser cache. Once you have done this, this won't happen again.

Let me know if you are still encountering problems after you have cleared up the browser cache. 

[Jason Maselino]

When will this be rolled out to all Jira plans? We don't see it in our instance.  

[Markus Ernst]

I have a question on this. We are on Standard. So is my understanding correct that I now could create new issuetypes on level 1 (Epic) and than add this issuetype in the issue hierarchy to level 1 (Epic)? Currently I cannot create a new issuetype on level 1 and also cannot add it to level 1 at the hierarchy. Thanks!

[Tanya Grinsell]

Thanks for sharing @Josh Sherwood - do you know how these custom hierarchy changes impact Jira Align configuration? We were previously informed that changing the hierarchy to Epics or below would not be compatible with Jira Align future planned implementation.