How do I make Epic Link not mandatory?

[Craig Finlayson]

Hi All first time poster. I am trying to create subtasks in our JIRA cloud. However when I tried to create a subtask I get an error saying 'You must link this Story to an Epic before you can save'.

However JIRA tells you that you cannot update epic link in a user story

Can someone please tell me how I go about this? We do not have any field configurations setup at all. 

Many thanks

[John Funk]

Hi Craig - A couple of questions. What type of project is this? Next-gen? Classic Software? Business? 

Assuming it is not a Next-gen project, if you go to Project Settings, then Summary, you can look down and see the Field Configuration Scheme being used by the project. 

The top link in the section is the scheme and the one below it is the actual Field Configuration. If you have found your way to there, which it sounds like you might have based on a comment above, then you can see the Epic related fields. If the word Required is not beside the name, then it is not Required. 

So, that leaves me to believe that there is something in your workflow, like a Validator, that is requiring the Epic Link field be set on the Create transition. Can you check that? 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

>We do not have any field configurations setup at all

You absolutely do if you're seeing this message.  It's the only way to make the link mandatory.  You'll need to separate out the field configurations such that stories have one that still has it mandatory, and a second for sub-tasks that does not.

Next-gen projects won't have field configurations, but equally, they won't throw this message because they don't.

[Craig Finlayson]

Thanks Nic. Apologies I meant to say we don't use any field schemes. Just the default field config. I have tried to create a new field config but when you go to epic link in the newly created field config it shows as locked and does not give me the option to not make it required. Any ideas?