Introducing the new Parent field in company-managed projects

[Irene]

@Peter Fjelsten , Parent = Epic-Key will just return that parent's child issues, not its grandchildren, as per current. Is that what you meant?

[Irene]

@Colton_Kosicek this will start rolling out from mid-end October. 

The public roadmap is here https://www.atlassian.com/wac/roadmap/cloud/flexible-naming-of-epics?p=c0c344ce-98 

[Ryan Taylor]

@Ireneour org is currently in the process of migrating from Jira Server to Jira Cloud. We are not migrating projects all at once but rather project by project. Some have already migrated. If this new Parent field is applied before we complete the migration how Jira Server -> Cloud migrations be affected?

[Paddy Walsh]

What about third-party apps like JWT? - We have many workflow rules that use JWT conditions that reference the epic link - will these continue to work or do I have to change all the workflows? And when exactly will this happen?

[Irene]

@Ryan Taylor , migrations won't be affected. The Parent field will read from the same place as the Epic Link & Parent Link field. So you will still see the same data, they will just be displayed as Parent field in Cloud. 

[Ollie Peacey]

Hi @Irene , this is a great feature and will some problems for us. Do you have an ETA for when this will go live?

[Binoj Ammeripadath]

@Irene In my organization, we prevent the ability to update the issues once the status transitions from "Done" to "Approved". However, in a situation where an Epic was Approved, we have the ability to reference this Epic in the Epic Link of a User Story or Task or Bug. I'd like to understand whether we will continue to have that feature after we transition out the Epic Link field out to Parent.

Please clarify.

Thanks,

Binoj

[Irene]

@Ollie Peacey - we are opening up Beta to a bigger group of customers in Mid-October, and then aim to start the rollout from early November. Would love to hear a testimonial from you on how this feature will solve some problems from you! If you don't mind posting it here, or otherwise email me on: ireneo@atlassian.com . Thank you :) 

[Irene]

@Binoj Ammeripadath not sure if I understand 100% how you have set this up, but there doesn't seem to be anything we have changed that will block you from applying the same rules with Parent field.

[Franklin]

I'm curious if there is any built-in validating business logic associated with this new field that would prevent hierarchies such as Epic > Subtask (something users have long been told they can't do)? Likewise prevent an absurd hierarchy such as Subtask > Epic?

[Irene]

@fea yes there is. Invalid parent-child relationship won't be allowed.

[Tomer Bareket]

@Maria Emilia Sosa you can workaround it via the workflows, just add a validation to the "create" transition

@Irene is there a new ETA for this to be live? plus, I'd really love to join the BETA

[Robin Powell]

Will this change apply to Data Center also? Or just Cloud?

[Irene]

@Robin Powell just for Jira Cloud.

[Ollie Peacey]

@Irene we want to transition from the conventional epic/story structure to an epic/feature/story framework. A primary concern hindering this shift is the potential confusion arising from the "Epic" system fields, such as "Epic link". By renaming "Epic" related fields to "Parent", we can minimize confusion and smoothly integrate Features in place of Epics.

[Jose Rodriguez]

How will this work with swimlanes? Will Parent be part of the swimlane dropwdown and does it work with issuetypes above Epics in the Issue Hierarchy?

[Irene]

Thank you @Ollie Peacey !

@Jose Rodriguez  - swimlanes won't change as yet, it will work with only Epics level.

[Sune Vester Lindhe]

Hi @Irene

Do you know if this feature will find its way into DC?

[svivanco]

Really hoping (& needing) to see this soon!

[Brendan]

@Irene Is it possible to make this field Mandatory? We weren't able to do this with the Parent and Epic link fields so had to build automation email reminder routines.

How to make Parent Link mandatory in Epics? (atlassian.com)

[Irene]

Hey @Brendan , 

No, not with Parent field either. 

It’s not (yet) possible to make the field mandatory as it’s not possible for every issue to have a parent, for example an issues on the top hierarchy level. If we are to make it mandatory, on our side we will need to add an exception for the top hierarchy level or any other unknown cases as yet. And that's not in the scope of what we are doing at the moment. 

One of the recommendations in the other community post sounds valid, i.e: create workflow validations that require the parent field to be set when moving through the transitions. So for example, the issue won’t be able to transition from “To Do” to “In Progress” unless the parent field is set.

[Irene]

@Sune Vester Lindhe , if you are referring to Parent field in particular, no not as yet. 

[Tsafrir Meir]

Hi Atlassian,

First of all - thanks and great that you're aiming for standardizing the parent-child relationship accross the entire issues hierarchy!

We're using premium, and a customized multi-level hierarchy (with 3 levels above epic). We need an easy option to create child issues from a within a parent issue. Currently this is possiblle only for createing child stories under an epic. We'd like that option also for all the other (higher) levels. Please add this request to your backlog and give it a priority... 

(Note: we're aware of the option to do that using the AR interface. We need that from the standard Jira issue details view...)

Thanks,

Tsafi

[Florent Baret]

Hi @Irene ,

Thanks for all these changes, we are really looking forward this parent standardization.

Could we still access the EAP/Beta or have an ETA of the incoming roll-out on a specific instance as many configuration are based on "Parent link" (events mainly)

Best regards,

Florent

[Irene]

Hi @Tsafrir Meir thank you for that request. It is in our backlog and we are looking forward to getting this done ASAP.