Parent child relationship not displaying in advanced Roadmaps

[Tanya Fraser]

I have three projects but the parent child relationships aren't displaying as I'd expect in Advanced Roadmaps

Can anyone help me work out what I have done wrong

I have created an Initiative type in one project, Called Course.

I have created a second Project with issue type called "Features" 

I have created a third project with base tasks.

I want to combine them in Advanced Roadmaps to see their relationships but it isnt working as I expect. 

I have created Parent Child relationships between the Course and Features, and between Features and Base Tasks.

I have created an issue hierarchy that has Course at the top, then Features then epics then base.

I expected the base (PMTF-18)  to be nested under features (CTNSW-58), under course. 

But that is not happening in Advanced Roadmaps.
All the Base issues are listed as unlinked. And if I add the Parent link field to check, it is not showing, yet if I go into the Issue, the parent link is there.

[Walter Buggenhout · Accepted solution]

Hi @Tanya Fraser,

Great to see you share a lot of information, but a couple of things are a bit shady, still. So I'll try to explain the steps to build a hierarchy bottom up.

Jira by itself already has a default issue hierarchy that you cannot modify. It consists of Epic > Story > Sub-task. You can add additional issue types at the story and sub-task hierarchy levels, but they must be standard issue types and sub-task issues types at the corresponding levels.

You can extend the hierarchy by creating additional levels. These will always be above the Epic level. You do so via Advanced Roamaps Settings > Advanced Roadmaps hierarchy configuration:

In this example, I added an initiative level above epic. The approach you used to create separate projects for the additional issue types is fine. I did the same. But make sure you also map out the issue types to the corresponding levels here. Repeat the process for additional levels. Based on your scenario I would expect to see:

• Base mapped to the story level;
• Epic at level 1, where it is by default;
• Features at level 2, above epics
• Course at level 3, above features

You cannot skip levels in the hierarchy. That means you cannot create a parent - child relationship between a feature and a base (task), as that would mean you are skipping the epic level. So that is a first thing that may not match your expectations.

A second thing is the way issues are linked in the hierarchy. To create proper links, the following applies:

• sub-tasks are automatically linked to their parent story/base task. You cannot create a sub-task on its own, without a parent issue.
• story level issues are linked to an epic via the epic link field (though Atlassian is working on transforming this into the parent link field);
• epics and issues at higher levels, the link is defined by the parent link field 

If all these are filled out correctly, the hierarchy should display correctly in Advanced Roadmaps.

Hope this helps!

[Tanya Fraser]

Thank you, you have answered my question perfectly.

My issues was a combination of not mapping one aspect correctly, and not realising that story level issues will map to Epics. 

Thank you!