Receiving an error from Kanban > Roadmap 'JQL filter is blocking your roadmap'

[Kendra Clark _FMT-PM_]

Hello,  I just created this project and admittedly a bit rusty on setting up Kanban vs Scrum which I have more practice with.  On my Kanban board I only want to display non-Epics so perhaps in hiding Epics from display caused this.  Honestly I'm not sure but I wasnt able to find specific help for this Roadmap error 'A JQL filter is blocking your roadmap'

[Thomas Holt]

Hey I got the answer from Atlassian support. 

Evidently the standardIssueTypes() does not return Epics. (They suggested this is the definition, but I suspect it's a change)

To fix it you can replace 

issuetype in standardIssueTypes()

with 

issuetype not in subTaskIssueTypes()

or 

(issuetype in standardIssueTypes() or issuetype = epic)

[Jackie Bilog]

Thank you so much for looking into this, Thomas! 

[Audra Rowley]

Interestingly enough, it works for me now again. I hadn't updated the JQL yet.

[Gregory S Williams]

I'm raising a high priority ticket and referencing this Community page, my users are seeing the same issue as you all, and the JQL is similar to @Thomas Holt :

filter: project = GMSUI AND issuetype in standardIssueTypes() ORDER BY Rank ASC

Glad to see it's not just me!

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Kendra Clark _FMT-PM_ 

Welcome to the community.

Is that the full message you see?

When I adjust the filter on my board to exclude Epic issues, this is the full message I get:

A JQL filter is blocking your roadmap

There’s a JQL filter applied to your board, and it’s preventing the roadmap from displaying epics.

Your board admin can adjust this filter to unblock the roadmap, without affecting the set up of your board.

This clearly states that the problem is epics are being prevented from displaying on the roadmap.

Roadmaps are based on displaying the timeline for Epics and their children (in Jira Standard subscriptions). Your board filter must include Epics. 

If you don't want the Epics to display on your board, you could add a Quick Filter that you could activate to hide the Epics. Or, you can turn on the Backlog screen and the Epics panel (on the Columns page in Board Settings) and then the Epics will display only on a side panel in the Kanban Backlog screen.

[Kendra Clark _FMT-PM_]

Nice to meet you virtually!

Here is the full message with the conflict:

“A JQL filter is blocking your roadmap

There’s a JQL filter applied to your board, and it’s preventing the roadmap from displaying epics.

Your board admin can adjust this filter to unblock the roadmap, without affecting the set up of your board.

Learn more about displaying epics on the roadmap”

[Trudy Claspill]

So, then, yes, the filter on the board is excluding the Epic issue types. You'll have to change the board filter to include the Epic issue types to unblock use of the Roadmap feature.

And then you can use either of the suggestions I provided if you don't want to show the Epic issue cards on the board display.

If that addresses your issue, please mark the answer as Accepted. If you have additional questions, please let us know.

[Thomas Holt]

I seem to be having this problem and as far as I can tell the filter is not excluding epics. 

here's my board

filter: project = CON AND issuetype in standardIssueTypes() ORDER BY Rank ASC

I checked to make sure standardissuetypes() included epics and it does. 

[Jackie Bilog]

We are also encountering a similar problem, however, it is only occurring when we use a query similar to Thomas' above.

For this query on a project board, we are unable to view the Roadmap. The board also now only contains Story issue types:

project = SREENG AND issuetype in standardIssueTypes() ORDER BY Rank ASC

All other projects have a query similar to this, and we do not have any issues viewing their respective roadmaps: 

project = DATA ORDER BY Rank ASC

We could modify the first query by removing the standardIssueTypes() piece, but we are hoping to not include subtasks on the board. 

[Tina Shah]

Same as above is happening for me as well all of a sudden.

[Cristiano Ferrato Moraes]

We are having exactly the same issue, and we are not filtering out the Epics too.

[Audra Rowley]

Seems like there is a bug or something is up.  This is a standard query we have used on our board for over a year and today it just started doing this too. 

[Mo Sajjad]

I tried another thing that seemed to have worked for me. It was an interesting change. I added all my epics to a new column (through board settings). I called that column "Epics" once all epics were added to that column, I went to board settings and deleted that column. It seems that when the column was deleted, it took the epics with it, and did not display them anymore. However, the epics still exist and show in roadmap. 

If you go through this route and decide you still want epics to show up on kanban board, simply expand the epic and change it's phase from "epic" to "selected for development" column (as an example). The epic will show up again on the kanban board.

[Andrey Polunosik]

I don't see that the change has been revirted, the issue is still reproducible for me.

[Kythera Contreras]

ETA: NEVERMIND. Found what I was looking for. Board Settings > General > Edit Filter Query

Chiming in to possibly resurrect this issue. 

The users for one of our Jira projects are reporting the "A JQL filter is blocking your roadmap In order to use the roadmap, you need to adjust the JQL filter to show epics. Changing this filter won’t impact the setup of your board." error. 

The thing is, this particular company-managed Kanban project has THREE boards. I'll call them P, DC, and C.

Board C shows the roadmap just fine.

Boards DC and C show the "A JQL filter is blocking your roadmap" error. Yes, I've checked, Roadmap is turned on for those boards. Still get the error.

I cannot for the life of me figure out how to modify JQL filters to apply to these boards, let alone in a way to resolve this issue. I can only create/save JQL filters for basic issue searches. Nothing I can find tells me how to apply that to the roadmap for a specific board for a specific project.

Help??

[Gregory S Williams]

I got a response from Atlassian and they reportedly fixed it:

From the (awesome) agent:
I did some digging on my end and found some internal discussions about what caused this issue. It looks like there was a change made on the backend with unintended consequences for classic Roadmaps, and this change has since been reverted (which makes sense as to why I can no longer reproduce the issue)

[Tina Shah]

Awesome! Works now for me :)

[Andrey Polunosik]

I don't see that the change has been revirted, the issue is still reproducible for me. I mean that I excluded Epics from my board and after that the Roadmap got broken.