Search for EPICS with no stories

[TEMPVIMAE]

Can I write a JQL for getting all the EPICS in the project that do not have stories under them.

[Jack Brickey · Accepted solution]

Not without an add-on. For example Scriptrunner provides the following option…

Issuetype = epic  and issuefunction not in haslinktype (“epic-story link”)

[Robin Surland]

That doesn't work even with ScriptRunner. 

[Jack Brickey]

This doesn’t work?

issuetype = Epic and issueFunction not in hasLinkType("Epic-Story Link")

[Robin Surland]

It works today, I'm not sure what my issue was last week. 

[Doug Harriman]

I am trying to find all the Epics I have in the current PI, that are assigned to my team project, and do not have any stories/spikes/enablers linked to it. 

NOTE:  Our Epics are not in the same project as the team project where the stories/spikes/enablers resides.  This is what I have.  The first 2 parts work.  I tried to add the third part and cannot get it to work.

"Program Increment[Short text]" ~ PI## AND issueFunction in epicsOf(" project in (My_Project) ") AND issueFunction not in hasLinkType("Epic-Story Link")   

The error is that issueFunction does not exist. But it does because the second part of the script works and I am in ScriptRunner.

[Maria Lopez Alurralde]

is there a way to do this without an extension?

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Maria Lopez Alurralde 

Yes, and the how-to depends upon how frequently you need to do this, how many epics you have, etc.

Need this one time:

• export all of your issues to a spreadsheet, and perform the check there using spreadsheet functions / matching

Need this often, and do not have JQL extensions:

• using automation rules and a custom field (or label), count the issues assigned to an epic, and add that count to the epic.  That field (or label) could then be checked using out-of-the-box JQL.  Without knowing your specific Jira version or license level, please note this could consume your service execution limits for rules.
• manual check: using JQL and a dashboard gadget to report on the children of epics, note the ones with a parent, and the remainder are the ones you want

Kind regards,
Bill

[Daniel Turczanski - __JQL Search Extensions]

Vanilla JQL doesn't support it. You can export your issues to spreadsheet and process the data there. Obviously it only works for one off jobs.

You can find such epics with our app JQL Search Extensions.

If you install it you'll be able to perform this search:

issuesInEpicCount = 0

 I hope this helps!

[Kimberly Luttenbacher]

We have this addon, we've tried the search, and it returns a single epic.  However, we have several epics in our project that have no issues in them, that are not returned by this query.
From what I can see, the epic the query finds doesn't have any links to other epics, but the epics we have with no stories that the query does NOT find are linked to at least one other epic. 
So I'm guessing but not certain that maybe the addon is counting "links" as "issues in the epic" even though the links are to other epics that relate to ours or that share dependencies.

[Daniel Turczanski - __JQL Search Extensions]

Hi @Kimberly Luttenbacher , please create a support request. It's the quickest way to get help with JQL Search Extensions. Thanks!

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @TEMPVIMAE  -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

How often do you need to do this, and do you have funds to purchase marketplace addons?

• When you need this once: consider exporting your issues to a spreadsheet and perform the comparison there
• When you need this often and have funds for addons: consider marketplace addons like @Jack Brickey suggests
• When you need this often and do not have funds: consider using a scheduled automation rule to either count the children and email you, or add the count to a custom field in the epic and then you can report on it later with JQL

Best regards,

Bill