Upcoming changes to epic fields in company-managed projects

[#1]

August 4th, 2023: Hi all, the changes outlined below are now completed, with the exception of Epic Status (which you can follow here: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Software-articles/Upcoming-The-backlog-epic-panel-will-soon-use-epics-Issue-status/ba-p/2373807). 

May 29th, 2023: A new comment with updates was posted here.

August 9th, 2022: This post was updated to include information about how this change effects epics on the project roadmap view. To learn more, see section titled Epics on your project roadmap.

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👋 Hi there Jira Community!

A few months ago we shared with you plans around renaming epics in your company-managed projects.

As part of these changes, we highlighted upcoming changes to epics on your board and backlog to more closely align epics across company-managed and team-managed projects. This involves reducing the use of fields specific to the epic issue type in company-managed projects:

• The name of the epic on the board and backlog will now use the epic’s Issue summary.

• The backlog’s epic panel will now use the epic’s Issue status category to determine if it is displayed.

• The epic color on the board and backlog will now use the epic’s Issue color.

In this blog, we’ll dig into exactly what these updates include and our recommendations for preparing for these upcoming changes.

Epic name → Issue summary

The name of the epic on the board and backlog will now use the epic’s issue summary.

Epics on your board and backlog will now display the epic’s Issue summary in their lozenge and on the epic panel. If your Epic name and its Issue summary are different, then this will be reflected when we roll out these updates.

The existing Epic name field will remain available, but will be optional when creating a new epic.

What should I do to prepare?

If you’d like to move your Epic name values to your epics' Issue summaries, you can do so by:

1. Exporting your values to CSV

2. Updating the Epic name and Issue Summary values in Excel or Google Sheets

3. Importing this data back in Jira Software

For more detailed information on how to export and import you epic field values, see: https://support.atlassian.com/jira-cloud-administration/docs/import-and-export-your-data-to-and-from-jira-cloud/

If you’re updating your issue summaries, keep in mind that the names displayed on the board and backlog have a max character limit (19) – longer names will be truncated.

Epic status → Issue Status Category

The backlog’s epic panel will now use the epic’s Issue status category to determine if it is displayed.

Previously, the backlog’s epic panel used the Epic status value to determine if an epic would be displayed or not. 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 removed from the epic panel list, regardless of the status of their child issues.

We’ve changed the logic of the epic panel slightly by respecting the epic’s Issue status category. 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.

The Epic panel will also respect the status of an epic’s child issues. An epic’s children will all need to be Done for the epic to be considered complete and removed from the panel.

What should I do to prepare?

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")

You may want to also review the status of any child issues of completed epics to ensure they’re correctly marked as Done.

Epics on your project roadmap

Previously, the project roadmap (which is available as part of the free and standard versions of Jira Software, not Advanced Roadmaps) used the Epic status value (as defined in the backlog’s epic panel) in conjunction with the Issue status to show or hide epics. If an epic has either of these set to ‘done’, they would be filtered from your roadmap view.

As we continue to deprecate the Epic status field, the roadmap now ignores this value when deciding which issues to show. As a result, you may see old epics on your timeline that weren’t there before.

What should I do to prepare?

If you’d like to remove a specific old epic from your roadmap view, make sure that the Issue status field is marked ‘Done’.

If this doesn’t remove the issue from your view, make sure that the Issue display range in the View settings is set to exclude completed issues of a certain age.

To retroactively remove multiple completed issues from your roadmap, you can also add the following line to your JQL filter:

AND NOT (issuetype = Epic and "Epic Status" = Done)

Epic color → Issue color

The epic color on the board and backlog will now use the epic’s issue color.

We’re making minor changes to the color palette for epics in company-managed projects to better match the experience in team-managed projects.

What should I do to prepare?

You won’t need to do anything in Jira to prepare for this particular update.

We’ll automatically update your epics to their closest equivalent Issue color, however, you may notice a slight variation in the color of your epics.

What's next

We'll begin progressively rolling out these updates over the coming months, beginning with the changes to the epic panel logic (respecting the epic’s Issue status category).

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!

[Dave Mathijs]

HI @Rohan Swami1 , I really welcome these changes as they are confusing right now. People just don't understand the difference between Summary and Epic Name.

Also. the fact that you can only change the Epic Status from the Epic Panel is not logical.

Looking forward to the changes, consistency and standardisation is key, also for admins.

[Nikki Zavadska _Appfire_]

Thanks for the heads up! This will definitely make epics less confusing :)

[František Špaček _MoroSystems_]

Thanks for it, some of these changes are long overdue.

I just wanted to ask - why are Epics in Epic panel driven by status category and not by resolution? From my point of view it would make more sense since there is no status of epic displayed in backlog and it is just hidden/visible state, nothing more. And we have this in Jira's world usually driven by resolution, no?

I can think of bunch of scenarios where clients wanted to have status category green yet it does not meant issue is done already (because we do not alow custom status colors sadly).

Thank you :-)

[Rohan Swami]

@František Špaček _MoroSystems_ Short answer is we thought that approach would create too much complexity for users. Many customers use custom workflows and these don't set a resolution by default, so it's safer to use categories as all issue statuses belong to a category.

[Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira]

Hi @Rohan Swami

this is great news - thank you for driving this!

Just a quick note on moving epic names to the issue summary field, for those who want to avoid the Jira to Excel/Sheets to Jira roundtrip: This can also be done with a simple copy/paste operation in JXL for Jira, like so:

This works for up to 10000 issues in one action, and for any issue field. Disclaimer: I work on JXL :)

Best,

Hannes | https://jxl.app

[Debra Jones]

About time. Always confusing to users when trying to explain the difference between the Workflow Status and the Epic Status.

Will it also use the Status Category to determine difference between 'Done' Epics when adding the 'Epic Link' within Issues?

[Trevor White]

Just wanted to +1 how helpful this is, have spent forever either renaming these for consistency or trying to explain why they both exist!

[Rohan Swami]

@Debra Jones Yes we'll use Status Category in the Done filter for consistency.

Great to hear, @Trevor White !

[David Hiatt]

@David Tieman @David Tieman Well, this is interesting and will share with the group.

[G subramanyam]

Thank you @Rohan Swami1 I'm interested to read next set of updates on this roll out.

[Bogdan Gorka]

In this scenario I would rather use the Automation to migrate/copy epic names to issue summary.

Simply create an automation with the trigger: Scheduled. This trigger enables the 'Run rule' button.

Then create a simple branch with JQL including these Epics which should be updated.

Finally press the button 'Run rule' and check in the audit log which issues have been updated. I would do the update in batches (eg. 1000 or 5000 issues in one go)

In my opinion, no additional plugin is required (sorry JXL for Jira :-) )

[Harley Reid]

This is great! 

[Vera]

Thank you! Our scrum masters have found the Epic Name and Issue Summary usage to be super confusing. Especially when you step from the backlog into the board. Suddenly the names are all wordy and difficult to crossmatch with the previous page. Really welcome change! 

And thanks to everyone in the community who is sharing their methods for updating Epics!

[Matthieu Turgeon]

The next cool thing would be to see the total child estimate original time and total child time spent in the epic panel.
Ideally, this time should exclude the original time for the epic

[Mark Thompson]

Knowing an exact timeline would be helpful.  How do we determine when this change will occur in a specific organization?  Nobody is likely to remember if we send out an email months before the change.  Will there be any notification right before the change rolls out to our organization?

[David Wuth]

two thumbs up for these changes!!!! 

[David Stokes]

What I would really like to see in Company Management projects is an epic filter on the kanban board just like the backlog and kanban views in Team Managed projects.  It makes it so much easier to navigate around using epics.

[Rohan Swami]

@Mark Thompson We'll share a more accurate timeline as we get closer to the release, we're still a while away from that so I'm unable to give you a specific date at the moment.

[Praveen Bansal]

This is great. Summary and Name were always confusing

[Craeg Strong]

Aha, it seems that Jira is paving the way for supporting an Epic --> Capability --> Feature --> Story hierarchy.   SAFe standardized on that, and from what I am seeing it is becoming a bit of a de facto taxonomy for the industry, whether you use SAFe or not.   This is a bit of a painful change, but it's time.   Long gone are the days when most Jira projects were just a "two pizza" size.   

[Brett Fairbairn]

Welcome change :pray

[Jan Sebek]

I welcome the change of colours as I was already annoyed by the old ones.

[Zannah Pierce]

Are "Epics" going to be "Features" now? in the before/after the word has changed. 

[Walter Buggenhout]

Very good initiative indeed. And talking about filters, it would be very useful if the board quick filters would also affect the Epics in the the Epics panel in backlog view. Especially on multi-project boards, being able to limit the list of epics based on the same criteria that apply to the issues in the backlog would be a huge help as well!

[Karlon Auger]

PLEASE add more Epic colors :pray: 
We do a lot of work around here, and like to keep it organized

There's lots of interest for this
https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSWCLOUD-16051