Introducing the new Parent field in company-managed projects

[Irene]

Hi @Florent Baret , the EAP/Beta has closed now, and we are going to start rolling it out to everyone else very very soon. However, it is a progressive roll-out and we can't be quite exact on when your instance will get it. 

[Laurent Quevedo]

Hi @Irene, I've recently posted a question in the community about the expectation of having nested issues in Work Management List View for Parent field: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Work-Management-Questions/Expectation-of-having-nested-issues-in-Work-Management-List-View/qaq-p/2529662#M9538

In summary, I was wondering if we would have the nested issues in List view of Work Management projects working for other issues types in the same level of Epics once this change is rolled out, because right now, only Epic issue type shows the expand/collapse arrow.

Could you shine a light on this? Thanks!

[Aline Chapman]

@Irene , @Rick Olson @Dean Leaso Regarding automation: I just had all my automations fail, they did not update automatically as it was my understanding and what Irene confirmed on Aug 29 23. This was the error message: "Epic Link will soon be replaced with Parent. Update to Parent field to prepare for these changes.". I had to update all my automations from "Epic Link" to "Parent" field and now they are working. I wanted to let everyone know to check automations.

Also please share any impact you might see with this change, if you see anything admins need to update.

Thanks!

[Paddy Walsh]

I thought this was supposed to be seamless - breaking existing installations is not really acceptable!

[Paddy Walsh]

What about workflow validations by third-party products such as Jira Workflow Toolbox? Are these all going to fail too?

[Florent Baret]

@Paddy Walsh I agree. In fact Parent field is populated since some times on issues (you can find it in history updated in the same time than "Epic link") but it's not displayable yet, so in my opinion it will be seamless in Jira (and third party add-ons) on dynamic content.

But I'm not sure that will be seamless in scripts (Jira smartvalues, additional fields in Automation, scriptrunner scripts (listeners, post-functions, validators, behaviors...),  Jira Workflow toolbox (or JMWE) scripts, etc...). @Irene could you please confirm that any scripted reference of "Epic link" or "Parent link" (like customfield_XXX) should be manually updated to the new Parent field ("parent" ?) ?

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Aline Chapman 

Just another user of the products here.

Did your automation rules actually fail, or do you just see the warning message?

I see the warning message in my rules that use Epic Link, like this:

The rule still functions correctly though.

According to the following document, you will not need to change rules that currently use Epic Link.

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/upcoming-changes-epic-link-replaced-with-parent/#Updates-to-automation

[Aline Chapman]

@Trudy Claspill Yes, I saw the same message you see. The automation status was "NO ACTIONS PERFORMED" and it did not execute as it should have. Once I updated the automation to Parent field it is working and status is now "SUCCESS".

[Trudy Claspill]

@Aline Chapman 

I would be curious to explore your scenario in more detail. Could you open it as a Question post and provide screen images showing your full rule and the Audit Log details for the execution that said "No Action Performed"?

[Konstantin Kulishenkov]

Hi @Aline Chapman, thank you for reporting this problem.

The changes we're rolling out are backward compatible, so all existing Automation rules that involve Epic Link or Parent Link will continue working seamlessly. The same applies to Worflows and Jira Expressions used in the JMWE validator.

We have not been able to reproduce this error. @Aline Chapman, if you can still reproduce it when using Epic Link, would you be able to raise a support request with Atlassian? This will allow us to investigate this problem for your particular use case. The information we ask you to include in your support request is the following:

• Is it for a team-managed project or a company-managed project?
• When did this fail?
• If there is any additional information in Automation's audit logs?
• If you could describe what the rule is doing?

Note that for privacy reasons, such information can't be posted here. Hence, we suggest raising a support request. In the request, please ask the team to get me involved in it.

Thanks,
Konstantin Kulishenkov

[Aline Chapman]

@Konstantin Kulishenkov thank you for investigating. I will try to go back and reproduce and open a ticket with support. For now, everything is working fine.

[Charlie Misonne]

I have the same question as @Michaël Droz-dit-Busset 

Will we be able to:

• Set a parent via the API?
• Change the parent via the API?
• View the parent via the API?

[Florent Baret]

@Irene there will be an unexpected corner case with "Parent link" and "Epic link" values on a same issue. How will you manage this case ?

@Charlie Misonne the parent is already in the Jira issue model : issue.fields.parent if you look at the rest/api/3/issue endpoint. I assume it will be possible to set/change by updating the issue with the key parent.

[David Shaw]

@Charlie Misonne 

To answer your question of Nov 17, 2023, you can view, set and change the parent via the API.

CC: @Michaël Droz-dit-Busset

[David Shaw]

@Florent Baret 

If both the "parent link" and "epic link" values are included on the same issue via the API, then the "epic link" value will take precedence.

[Yatish Madhav]

Thanks @Irene and all the commenters ...

[Charlie Misonne]

@Florent Baret @David Shaw 

Thanks! Setting the parent via the API seems to work indeed :-)

[romain.arpin]

My company has just moved to Jira Cloud. Our new instance is still using "Epic link", how can we join the beta mentioned here ? https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-articles/Upcoming-Rename-epics-in-your-company-managed-projects/ba-p/1874726#:~:text=Just%20click%20the%20level%20name,reflect%20your%20new%20level%20name.  

[Megha Debnath]

There is a bug going around for most of our company-managed projects where the Parent Link or Epic Link field was added to the create screen which has become inactive. These fields were supposed to be replaced by the Parent field as mentioned in this article, but the Parent field is not visible in the Create screen. This is causing a big issue amongst the teams as they are unable to link a parent while creating. Anyone else facing the same bug?

[Paddy Walsh]

@Megha DebnathSeems OK for us - All our screens that had 'Epic Link' or 'Parent Link' fields still show those fields as disabled but there is a new 'Parent' field.

[Antoine _Klee Group_]

"nothing to do on your side" huh, as always it seems like the feature implementation is half baked.

I had to correct every single transition screen showing the "epic link" or "parent link" to replace it with "parent" because it's not possible to select tickets in the epic link.

I'm now working on JMWE's functionalities, god knows if it is still possible to force the value for epic link/parent link fields.

[Melanie Liguet]

Hi @Irene 

What about rest api? the existing APIs rest based on epics and their links will continue to work. should we plan modifications to the remaining APIs used in our bots?

is there a date when the existing jql functions "epickink", "parentlink" will no longer work?

Regards,

[Steffen Edinger]

On our cloud instance this works only when the users language is set to english. If the language is set to german there is a bug. In this case the parent field is shown in german named „Übergeordnet“ but the dropdown is empty. As soon as I change the language for the User back to english everything is fine. The field is named Parent and the Epics are in the dropdown. I assume this is a bug? 

[Paddy Walsh]

Was supposed to be seamless but it broke my workflows.

It seems it is not possible to validate the value of the parent field in any way - even checking if it has been supplied does not work. My previous validators ensured that the parent was of the correct type but this is no longer possible so it is now possible to set up invalid hierarchies.

There really should be some way for Jira to define what is an allowed hierarchy without having to resort to weird workflow validation anyway.

[Luís Guedes da Silva]

Hi! Is there a date defined for the "Epic Link" to be removed from the visible fields?

I just noticed today that there is already information after it saying " Replaced by Parent field". Thank you.