How To Display Subtasks on Epic?

[Panagiotis]

Hello,

I am using a Kanban board for my project and 3 days ago I created a 2nd Epic. I noticed that for some reason, the subtasks of this Epic do not appear when I open it up. That's weird because in the first epic they are displayed and I don't remember chaning the configuration. Do you know why on the same project, using the same layout, the subtasks do not appear on the Epic I made 3 days ago but they appear on an older one?

Thanks in advance. Please see the attached picture. Epic 1 is the older with the subtasks and Epic 2 is the new which does not display them.

[Mikael Sandberg · Accepted solution]

It looks like the first Epic has subtasks added to it by changing the parent of the subtask. As mentioned above, you cannot directly create a subtask on an Epic, but there is nothing that prevent you from creating the subtask under a task/story and then use Move to change the parent to be an Epic. 

The old issue view allowed you to add subtasks to epics, but the new view removed this feature.

[Panagiotis]

Ok, I managed to replicate it and followed what @Mikael Sandberg said.

I created a task and then made a child subtask. Inside subtask I clicked move and chose the Epic. Now I have the subsection view in the second Epic. The funny thing is that I didn't do it since I didn't know that's possible. I don't know how it was made on the first Epic. Anyhow, now I understand what happened and if I want to view the subtasks I know how. Thank you all for your help.

[Slava Gefen]

Hey @Mikael Sandberg 

but there is nothing that prevent you from creating the subtask under a task/story and then use Move to change the parent to be an Epic

Do you know is it a bug or feature? 🙂

With kind regards
Slava

[Jack Brickey · Accepted solution]

so I need to do a bit of research as I have never seen subtasks listed under the detailed view of an Epic. Let me ask...

• are your two views above still present today?
• assuming so are these two epics under the same project or different projects? if the same project is this classic or next-gen. if different is one classic and one next-gen
• do you use and addons?

[Jack Brickey]

note: it very well could be that you are on a new version of cloud as there are many different versions out there.

[Panagiotis]

Hello and thanks in advance

• Yes they are active and I am working them right now
• Yes they are under the same project. I suppose classic but where I can check it out?
• Only the WBS Gantt Chart, but I don't this is a problem

[Jack Brickey]

if NG it will show as such in the bottom left and top right as below. Can you provide a full screenshot for the xxx-1 epic showing the sub-tasks? obfuscate any private info.

[Panagiotis]

Ok got it, it's a classic software project. Here is the full Epic 1 modal let me know if you need more info.

[Panagiotis]

And this is what I see when I press on a task and sub task:

[Jack Brickey]

well i'm surely scratching my head. Again I have never seen sub-tasks under an epic displayed. I'm pinging other Community Leaders in hopes they have some experience and can chime in here. I can only guess that it is something new in your instance. Though you are saying now if you create a new Epic w/ stories that then have sub-tasks they are not displayed, correct?

[Julian Governale]

@Panagiotis Can you take a screen shot of the sub-task history for one that under your epic just to confirm something "automation" of some way didnt moved the sub-task to the epic or clone it to the epic?  Looking at the issue keys, the subtask under the task shows XXX-8 where i dont see that issue key under the epic. 

[Panagiotis]

Exactly, I made this Epic, which was the first this project (and one of my firsts in general) and started adding tasks and subtasks under them, if they had. And I got what you see in Picture 1. Now, I am in need of second Epic and when I started making tasks and subtasks, I saw that the subtasks section was missing. I looked into settings, screen layouts etc, even made other two Epics in other projects and I got what you see in Picture 2 (no subtasks section). And the weird thing is that I don't remember messing with the options, it should be all default. I don't understand what changed.

[Mikael Sandberg]

It looks like the first Epic has subtasks added to it by changing the parent of the subtask. As mentioned above, you cannot directly create a subtask on an Epic, but there is nothing that prevent you from creating the subtask under a task/story and then use Move to change the parent to be an Epic. 

The old issue view allowed you to add subtasks to epics, but the new view removed this feature.

[Jack Brickey]

one other request... could you expand your browser window so that the buttons at the top (attachment, create child, link...) expand to illustrate the details. I'm interested in what these are...

[Jack Brickey]

excellent sleuth work @Mikael Sandberg this has to be the cause. I'm glad they closed this hole as it is a bad one IMO.

you should move your reply and make it an answer so that it can be accepted.

[Panagiotis]

@Jack Brickey @Mikael Sandberg 

The points is, that I didn't tried to make a subtask directly to the Epic. The subtasks you see, are the subtasks of the Tasks! It's just a view, I never said that I made subtasks directly to the Epic itself. Instead of goin in every task to see their subtasks, they are all gathered in the view you see on Picture 1.

@Jack Brickey  Pressing these buttons, scrolls me down to the Issue dependency & Hierarchy, which they are empy as you can see...

 

[Panagiotis]

@Julian Governale I didn't understand what you asked, can you rephrase it please?

[Panagiotis]

@Mikael Sandberg @Jack Brickey @Julian Governale 

I think I found what @Julian Governale said, does this picture help to understand what's going on? I took this screenshot from a subtasks inside the Epic

[Julian Governale]

That's what I was looking for.  So it does look like the Parent value was set to the SCMS-1 epic during the creation stage somehow.  This does explain why its appearing under the Epic and not the task but doesnt explain how it was created directly under the parent.  

Was this epic by any chance originally a Task and then converted to an Epic?

[Panagiotis]

Could be @Julian Governale it's the only way it would have happened. Back then, I was learning Jira ( and I still do) so maybe I did something like that. As you can see I managed to replicate it. I just tested what you said and it works. So 90% this is what I did, because I wanted to include more tasks inside that one. Here is a picture of what I see afterr I converted the task to Epic:

[Julian Governale]

Check the history on the Epic in question (SCMS-1) to see if that conversion from task to epic happened but im leaning towards that as the possible culprit for what you saw.  If anything you learned some new aspects about Jira functionality with this question.  

[Panagiotis]

@Julian Governale You were 100% right Julian. here is the proof of that.

[Jack Brickey]

Great work @Panagiotis , @Julian Governale , @Mikael SandbergI might suggest marking @Mikael Sandberg answer as the preferred here as it reads clean.

[Christos Moysiadis]

@Panagiotis you can have a look to my app if this suits your case https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1225062/epic-subtask-issue-viewer?hosting=cloud&tab=overview

[Marcel Gromball]

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Core-questions/Sub-Tasks-inside-Epic-Bug/qaq-p/1521440#U1678930

Thats how to replicate it

[Rahul_RVS_Support]

Hi All

If anyone would be interested in a ready made solution to view Epic Hierarchy (Epic -> Story -> SubTask) on the Issue screen, can try out our add-on

Agile Tools - Epic Tree and Time in Status

It also has the options to update Estimates and Story Points fields, right there on the Issue Screen.

[Julian Governale]

Sub-tasks wont be present on Epics by default as they will always have a parent issue and that parent issue can be associated with the epic.  In this case the sub-task inherit the epic from their parent. 

There was a detailed discussion on the reasoning that can be found here

In your situation and you'll need to review each sub-task to see if it was moved which is what im suspecting.  Meaning a sub-task was created under a different parent, then at some point it was moved to a new parent which in this case was your epic you see in your first image. 

[Panagiotis]

I haven't move any subtasks. What I did was:

>Created the Epic

>Made 2 tasks (which as you can see appears inside the epic)

>Made 2 subtasks inside each task

So I don't understand what is the problem. I could use some guidance. Let me know if I did something wrong.