How to remove Epic from the select list of Epic link?

Clemens Luebbers December 18, 2014

I created an Epic, created stories related to it. Now the sprint is done. All stories have status closed and Epic has Epic status "Done" and also workflow status closed (Resolution = Done). Epic is no more visible on planning view in the board.

However, if I create a new story and want to select an Epic in field Epic link, the old Epic can still be selected. How do I get rid of the Epic in the select list of Epic link?

I have seen this: 
https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/253432

and also this: https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/AGILE/Completing+an+Epic

but that did not solve my problem.

Any ideas?

 

5 answers

1 accepted

3 votes
Answer accepted
Philippe Aubin
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December 18, 2014

The only solution i see is to delete the Epic to stop seeing it in your autocomplete. The Epic Link field does not take see the status of the Epic, it just show all. If you want to keep your Issue you could export them in .csv and keep them in an external repository.   

Clemens Luebbers December 18, 2014

Hi Philippe, thanks - the export could be a workaround. I will wait, if other solutions are proposed, before accepting this answer. Regards Clemens

Clemens Luebbers January 12, 2015

Hi Philippe, there was no other approach proposed. So the proposal of exporting and deletion of epics is probably the only currently available approach - what I feel as very unsatisfactory, but that is subject to Atlassian. Thanks for your response. Regards Clemens

4 votes
Eric Smith August 10, 2015

I'm having a similar issue.  Honestly, it should be an option to disallow linking of tasks to Epics that are in a closed status.  This seems simple...

Ingo Mohr February 3, 2016

+1. Closed epics should not show up in the drop down list of available epics in the issue editor. There should at least be an option for this. Didn't find one in JIRA 7, too.

Johnny Andersen June 22, 2018

+1 I see no reason for the "remove all papertrails" suggestion to be accepted as the solution here.

Peter Gilchrist June 24, 2018

+1 there are a few solutions that involve purging important historical data from an integrated system and then dumping to a .csv file (which is never never land).

Kristy Lapidus February 11, 2019

+1

2 votes
Felix Diaz December 19, 2014

1-) Go to Issues.
2-) Filter the by Type: "Stories" and Creator: "yourUSER". (look for the set of testcases you are trying to remove).
3-) Click on Tools   (It is on the top and right side).
4-) Select All XXX issue(s).
5-) Check the testcases that you are willing to remove from the EPIC.
6-) Click Next
7-) Cherck the "Edit Issues" radio button.
8-) Click Next
9-) Check "" and leave the Dropdown empty (DO NOT WRITE OR SELECT ANYTHING HERE)
10-) Clcik Next
11-)Confirm.

Clemens Luebbers January 12, 2015

Hi Felix, sorry for late response, but year end is holiday time ... I understand your approach that this will remove the Epic link from existing tickets (issue type "Story" or in my case "Task"). My problem is different: The Epic xyz and all associated stories are solved / done. However, if I create any new Story (nothing to do with epic "xyz") and want to select the appropriate epic, the epic "xyz" is still in the list of selectable epics. Over years the list will become very big, and mis-selections will happen more often. Philippe proposed to delete the epic and your proposal to remove the links from the stories to the epic would be in line with that approach. However, in that case I would lose the correct history of the development (as the epic part would be missing). Export as .csv would be a kind of workaround to limit this lost. But as I got no other approach, it is probably the only available approach currently. Thanks and regards Clemens

Peter Gilchrist January 20, 2015

Clemens I am in the same predicament; users are already annoyed and I only have about 15 epics. Why a status is not linked with the appearance in the picklist is quite prohibitive. I am hoping in Atlassian Cloud I will be able to manage this at some point.

1 vote
Aaron Ponzani May 30, 2019

Change "Epic Status" to "Done" as well as "Status" to "Closed"

Will remove it from the Epics panel and the Epic Link dropdown.

Clemens Luebbers June 3, 2019

Hi Aaron,

thanks for the answer. It seems that already changing "Epic Status" to "Done" will remove the Epic from Epic Link dropdown.

Regards

Clemens

frederic July 22, 2019

Hi Aaron,

 

I'm also trying to deal with this and I'm finding that 'done' epics are excluded in the old view, but they still show up in the new view and I can't find a way to get rid of them..

Like # people like this
Joey Fung August 22, 2019

Thank you for investigating, Frederic. This explained it for me as I thought "Done" Epics wouldn't show. Looks like some functionality got lost in the new view.

Like Emily J Austin likes this
christopher.lee4 December 4, 2019

Atlassian, fix the new view, please.

Like # people like this
Kenneth Hess January 2, 2020

We have the same issue as well.  Has anyone opened a support request with Atlassian?

Like # people like this
Niels Nijdam April 21, 2020

Commented on this ticket aswell. Really bothering for us

0 votes
eric johnson January 29, 2019

Go to Issues 
write JQL: 
Project = xyx and type = "Test Case" and "Epic Link" is not Empty and "Epic Link" = xyz 
Then go to Tools Choose Issues, Choose Operation - Edit Issue, Operation Details - Click Change Epic Link - Leave blank , Confirmation and Acknowledge 

This filter/query has optional components such as Epic Link = to be specific in the query if you want to show all Epic Links leave the last and off.

This is great for when the planning team sees too many test cases associated with a huge Epic which generates a large number of Test Cases it makes the Issues in Epic very hard to read.

Alan Tragarz April 29, 2021

The workaround I tried is to change the Epic Name to something like DO NOT USE, that way when you do a typeahead for an epic named, say, Production Support, the old epic will not appear. Just don't search for DO NOT USE :)

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