Upcoming: The backlog epic panel will soon use epics' Issue status category

[#1]

Update 23rd October 2023:

Hi all, just an update that these changes to the backlog's epic panel have been rolled out in early October. If you are on the 'Bundled' release tracks, the changes are coming mid-November. 

One change that hasn't been mentioned in this post is the removal of "Mark as Done" button on the Epic Panel. With "Epic status" deprecation, that button is no longer needed so it has been removed. To mark an Epic as done, you just need to update the Epic's issue status to the Done category. 

Update 27th September 2023:

Hi all, this change will start rolling out this week. As a reminder, you might see different Epics being shown in the Epic Panel / Epic Drop Down, as we are now using the Epic Issue status category instead, and only those that are not marked as Done are listed. 

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Hi Jira Community! 👋

We announced last year that we’re making changes to epic fields in company-managed projects.

As part of these changes, we highlighted that epic status will no longer be used and we will use an epic’s Issue status category instead to determine whether an epic will be displayed on the backlog’s epic panel.

[Updated 4th August 2023] This change will happen end of September 2023.

Continue reading to learn how these changes might impact you and what you can do to prepare.

What’s changing?

Previously, the backlog’s epic panel used an epic’s Epic status value to determine whether an epic would be displayed. By default, the Epic status is only accessible from the epic panel, otherwise admins had to configure a field for it to be visible in the issue view.

Additionally, epics that were marked as Done were hidden from the epic panel list, regardless of the status of their child issues.

We’ve changed the logic of the epic panel slightly to respect the epic’s Issue status category instead. If you've created custom statuses in the Done category, the epic panel will behave as if the epic was complete if it is using one of these statuses.

How this change impacts you:

• If you have epics whose Epic status is marked as Done but the epic’s Issue status category is not Done, these epics will re-appear on your backlog epic panel.

• If you have epics whose Epic status is not Done but the epic’s Issue status category is Done, these epics will disappear from your backlog epic panel if all of its child issues are also marked as Done. [Update - 04 Oct 23] The child issues don't all have to be marked as Done for epics to disappear from your backlog.

What you can do to prepare:

We’ve provided a couple of JQL scripts for you to identify any Epics that have a different Epic status to their Issue status category. You can then use Jira’s bulk change functionality to update these statuses to match.

[Updated 4th August 2023] Our rollout begins in August end of September 2023, so you’ll have until early September 2023 to review your epics.

To view the epics that will appear in the epic panel once this change rolls out, use the following JQL in Advanced Search:

"Epic Status" = "Done" and statusCategory in ("To Do","In Progress")

To view the epics which may disappear from the epic panel once this change rolls out, use the following JQL in Advanced Search:

"Epic Status" != "Done" and statusCategory in ("Done")

What's next

[Updated 4th August 2023] We'll begin progressively rolling out these updates from the end of September 2023.

Keep an eye out here on the Atlassian Community for more information as we get closer to release.

In the meantime, if you have any questions or feedback on these updates, let us know in the comments below. Thanks all!

[Ann Rumenapp]

Question - How do I bulk change the statusCategory field to set it to done?  There are 640+ epics in my instance with "Epic Status" = Done that need the statusCategory also set to done.

[Rodrigo Angulo]

The statusCategory is a grouping of the statuses. By default those green status are considered done. If you you use type = epic AND statusCategory = Done you in the advanced issue navigator you be able to bulk change and transition these statuses. @Ann Rumenapp 

[Lauren]

YES! Can't wait. This has been such an admin overhead.

[Michael Payne]

I found a dozen or so Epics with Epic Status done but statusCategory not done, with no ability that I could see to change the status category. Please explain how to do this - or will it only be possible after the change is made in August? The comment above did not resolve the issue in bulk change. Do the workflows themselves have to be modified?

[Gary Spross]

@Michael Payne & @Ann Rumenapp, you can do an advanced search of 

issuetype = Epic AND "Epic Status" = Done AND statusCategory != Done

For all of the issues that are returned, do a bulk update and set the status (you can't set the "statusCategory") to whatever completed status the associated workflow has ("Done" or "Closed" for example). 

@Rodrigo Angulo, was simply pointing out that if you take a look at the associated workflow, any status in green is of the statusCategory "Done".

[Amanda Ward]

Why are there two status fields???

[Melissa Burns]

Greetings! I have a question regarding Epics. If an Epic has no assigned issues, will it disappear or still be visible? I'm working on a complex project and want to ensure that my future Epics are secure. Should I add some tasks to prevent them from disappearing? Please feel free to ask any additional questions. Thank you.

[Patrick van der Rijst]

@Amanda Ward that's what Atlassian is trying to solve here. "Epic Status" is being deprecated and will respect the actual issue's status. 

You can already prepare for this by setting up automation rules that sets the Epic Status to Done whenever an epic is transitioned to a Done status category and vice versa. 

[Gary Spross]

@Melissa Burns, empty Epics will continue to show within the Epics panel as long as the Epic's issue status is not in the "Done" category (i.e. a green colored status).

[Dan W]

Will this be implemented even if we don't have the epic name-->Summary change applied to our system yet?

[Ciaran]

It looks like Epics with the child issues marked as Cancelled will reappear until they are marked as Done, which isn't ideal depending on your reporting needs. 

[Gary Spross]

@Ciaran, not if you set the issue status as Done. See instructions in above comments.

[Yatish Madhav]

Thank you for this ... Looking forward to this update. Although, in an instance with almost a 1000 projects, I wonder what backlash this may have ... I do have some issues showing based on both the JQLs that you have provided but I wonder if and how they will impact project managers if and when they use the Epic panel in the backlog. Thank you

[Ibrahim Apena]

In line with @Melissa Burns  comment and @Patrick van der Rijst  response, 

• I do not use  statuscategory  but "Epic status" 
• if the "Epic status" is deprecated as i understood , it mean all the epic in the backlog panel will disappear ?
• To avoid the above 
  • i have to configure all epics to start using statuscategory  
  • then migrate all the "epic state" to statuscategory  

is my understanding correct. 

[BeeFC]

This is a welcoming change. A.K.A. change for the better!

[Gary Spross]

@Ibrahim Apena, the "statusCatgegory" is a bucket that a status falls into. There are 3 status categories: To Do, In Progress, & Done. These are set by Atlassian. Every status falls into one of those three categories. Epics are issue types, therefore they follow a workflow. A workflow is comprised of statuses and, as indicated previously, the statuses fall into status categories. 

You don't have to configure the Epics in any way other than to ensure that the issue status they are set to is actually correct. If the issue status of an Epic is in the To Do or In Progress status category, then the Epic will show within the Epic backlog. If the issue status of an Epic is in the Done status category, then the Epic will NOT show within the Epic backlog.

You can follow the instructions within my previous comments to perform a search and bulk update the issue status of your Epics to ensure you won't have any issues when the update is implemented.

[Barbara Shaw]

@Patrick van der Rijst could you please share how you configured your automation rule for this? ("that sets the Epic Status to Done whenever an epic is transitioned to a Done status category and vice versa")

[Jesse Geiger]

Nothing sets a Status Category except when you first create the Status. You have to pick one of the 3 categories. After that, that's it. Grey, Blue, or Green.

I'd like to bring up the difference between using a Status and a RESOLUTION for Epics (or any other issue type). Don't forget about that resolution field.  Instead of creating 6 different green stauts values for Done, Complete, Cancelled, Denied, or whatever, just keep the 1 "Done" green status, and create additional resolutions for the Done status.  The Epic is Done but Cancelled. Done and Completed. If anything, reporting is easier because you can refine to a second level (resolution). 

My workflows have automations that allow the users to choose their resolution and automatically set values.

[Gary Spross]

@Barbara Shaw, I use the following automation to ensure the Epic status aligns with the Issue Status the Epic is transitioned to. I run this rule globally.

Note: You have to set the "Epic Status" within the Advanced section as it's not a selectable field.

This rule becomes obsolete once the changes mentioned in this post are rolled out (since the "Epic Status" field basically becomes unused).

[Barbara Shaw]

@Gary Spross thank you so much very helpful ^^^

[Suresh Mantrala]

In Jira Cloud, before removing the Epic Status field from Epic screens, regarding the data-at-rest (existing Epics)

1. For the issues matching the query "Epic Status" = "Done" and statusCategory in ("To Do"), we can bulk update Epic Status to To Do and similarly for statusCategory in ("In Progress") to Epic Status = In Progress, so that Epics appear in the Epics Panel.

2. Not sure, why does Atlassian say - To view the epics which may disappear from the epic panel once this change rolls out using the query "Epic Status" != Done AND statusCategory in (Done).  As such these do not appear in the Epics Panel as they are of StatusCategory = Done. Even if Epic Status of these is bulk-updated to Done (for data sanity), why would they disappear, when they are already disappearing right now. Can someone explain?

[Michael Payne]

@Suresh Mantrala : regarding #2, "Not sure, why does Atlassian say - To view the epics which may disappear from the epic panel once this change rolls out using the query "Epic Status" != Done AND statusCategory in (Done).": so right now, the epic panel runs off of the Epic Status field NOT statusCategory. So an Epic with status !=Done appears in the panel, regardless of statusCategory. After the change, the epic panel will use statusCategory, NOT Epic Status. At that point, if an Epic has a status of not Done, but a statusCategory of Done, it will drop off the panel, because the panel criteria is only looking at statusCategory (there are some complexities with Epic issues, but that is the gist of it).

[Reinado Alves Santos]

Gostei muito desta atualização citada sobre o épico. Parabéns!!!

[Rosana Casilli]

So If  the category status of an epic is Done, then I do not need to perform any changes realted to this change righ?

[Mpho Christina Roomane]

Hello @Irene 

Kindly advise if the Epic panel change impacts Data Centre hosted Jira applications?

Kind regards,

Mpho