🚀 Exciting News for Jira Work Management Users: Enhanced Task Nesting Coming Soon! 🚀

[#1]

Get ready for a game-changing upgrade in Jira Work Management! We're thrilled to share that we're revamping how task nesting functions in both list and timeline views, promising a smoother and more intuitive project management experience.

Soon, all tasks under epics will be seamlessly nested in both list and timeline views. No more hunting through endless lists or timelines to find related tasks. With this enhancement, you can effortlessly organize projects and visualize dependencies, right within Jira Work Management.

But that's not all! If you have Jira Software Premium or Enterprise, you have the ability to view and create tasks at any level of the extended issue hierarchy in company managed projects directly from the JWM list and timeline views. Soon nesting will be supported for all custom issue types at all levels of the issue hierarchy, unlocking easier initiative, program, and portfolio level planning.

We're confident that these updates will improve the way teams structure, view, and manage projects in Jira Work Management. Stay tuned for these exciting improvements coming to JWM over the next several weeks, and get ready to elevate your project management game with Jira Work Management! 🌟

[Dave Mathijs]

Great news @Meg Christolini and congrats on your first post!

[Monty Bhatia]

This is great news!  Looking forward to this being resolved.

I wasnt clear on the comment:

"But that's not all! If you have Jira Software Premium or Enterprise, you have the ability to view and create tasks at any level of the extended issue hierarchy in company managed projects directly from the JWM list and timeline views. Soon nesting will be supported for all custom issue types at all levels of the issue hierarchy, unlocking easier initiative, program, and portfolio level planning."

In JWM today I can create an issuetype at any level from within timeline.

Is the above in reference to creating an issue from ANOTHER project within the timeline (for program/portfolio planning)?  And is this only for Jira Software (as this article is tied to JWM).

Thanks!

[Meg Christolini]

@Monty Bhatia Today level 1 issues and above in the issue hierarchy do not appear as nested under their parent in the JWM list an timeline views. With this update issues of all levels will appear as nested if they have a parent. 

JWM views will continue to only display issues within the project. We do not have any plans to change this behavior. I recommend leveraging the Plans feature in JSW to get a cross-project or portfolio view of parent and child tasks that span multiple projects.

I hope this clarifies! 

[conrad.k]

Obviously we can't know how JWM was released without this 'feature' but what's important is Atlassian listened, put resources to the solution and delivered. Well done team!

[Daniel Franz - JXL]

Thanks for the update, this looks great Meg. Looking forward to trying it out.

We at JXL for Jira know that Jira users love nesting their issues in deep hierarchy structures. Shameless plug: For anyone interested in managing their work like this beyond the standard Jira issue type hierarchy and beyond Jira Work Management, grab a free trial of JXL here. In JXL sheets, you can create and visualize your very own issue hierarchy in a breeze. It can deal with any issue types and be based on Parent, Parent link, Epic link fields, or on issue linking relationships, and it can cascade as deep as you like (see documentation here).

JXL is the all-in-one issue editor and organizer that saves you countless clicks and hours. The power of Jira with the simplicity of spreadsheets. Inline-edit issues in highly customizable tables, copy-paste fields individually or in bulk, sum up, rank, group, and structure issues in custom hierarchy, apply conditional formatting rules, surface issue history data such as time in status, and much more. Available for all Jira products in Cloud, Data Center and Server.

[John Funk]

Looking forward to this rollout very much!!

[Gaetan]

Hi @Meg Christolini will the enhanced task nesting also apply to Jira Software Cloud? 

[florianoberhauser]

Hi @Meg Christolini

That's great news! Will this also be possible in the timeline-view?

[Meg Christolini]

Hi folks, thanks for the questions! @Gaetan The updates we're making specifically apply to the list and timeline views in JWM. @florianoberhauser the update to the JWM timeline view will happen a few weeks after the first update to the list view in JWM.

[Milad S_]

Hi @Meg Christolini

This is great news, and I can't wait to see it. This was the primary reason for not using JWM in our organisation.

Does this mean we will have nesting functionality in the timeline and list views but not in the Board view? I hope this will be next in the queue.

[Gaetan]

Hi @Meg Christolini thanks for your replies. Do you guys have a timeline to implement enhanced task nesting into Jira Software Cloud as well?

[Meg Christolini]

@Milad S_ we're excited also!! The board view in JWM already supports some nesting behavior. We are exploring how we want to approach iterating here - perhaps incorporating some more if the functionality of the JSW board. We will be able to share more about that at a later time.

@Gaetan Could you share with me where you would expect to see nesting in JSW? Today the majority of customers who need nesting in JSW leverage Plans to accomplish this type of hierarchy view. Thanks!

[Gaetan]

Hi @Meg Christolini sorry if my previous question was unclear. I am referring to the Timeline view of software projects in Jira Cloud.

For instance: here you can see that the Subtask level doesn't show in the Timeline. Only Epic and Task levels are displayed.

So my question is: will this be improved as well, with 3-level nesting, just like JWM Timeline view?

[Meg Christolini]

Ahh I got you @Gaetan - We are not making any updates to the JSW (software projects) timeline view with this release. However aligning functionality across the views in business and software project types is something we are actively exploring.

I do not have a timeline I can share with you on when you'll see changes in the JSW timeline. This project is fully focused on the JWM (business project) views. Hope that clarifies, though I suspect this is not the answer you were hoping for!

[Tapiwa Samkange]

Thanks @Meg Christolini for this update! As someone who has been keeping a close eye on the Nest related Tickets in Board/Timeline issue, I am very pleased to receive your update. JWM is becoming such a powerhouse!

Thanks @Peggy Graham for the pointer to this article.

[Jeff Blaylock]

@Meg Christolini - is there a confirmed timeframe for this? Cheers! 

[Meg Christolini]

@Jeff Blaylock We are sharing updates on this ticket. Feel free to follow for more specific timeline updates as we have them. Thanks! 

[Gaetan]

Hi @Meg Christolini the new 3-level nesting feature in JWM List views is nice. But there's one caveat: when applying a filter (except for the "Hide done items" filter), the nesting (i.e. tree structure) disappears, and all the filtered issues are listed in a flat mode again. Even if an epic and its child tasks are all matching the filter condition (e.g. all in progress).

Is there a timeframe to improve this? Is it part of the coming improvements related to this article?

The rationale for the enhanced task nesting is to provide a better project management experience. Teams often have a lot of projects/programs in to-do or in-progress/in-review status categories. So, hiding done items isn't enough. We should be able to navigate a long list/timeline of projects using basic filters such as: status, assignee, label, issue type, priority, reporter, due date, etc.

If Atlassian doesn't plan to enable enhanced filtered task nesting as part of this on-going update, could you please redirect the community to the related ticket? Thanks

[Meg Christolini]

Hey @Gaetan - would love to start another thread on this! I'll share our current point of view, let me know if it resonates.

We group filtering into two types: 1 - live filtering, 2 - saved filters. We believe they have different use cases. Live filtering is closer to search, you're trying to narrow down the project to a list of issues that meet the filtering criteria. However saved filters are more like a sub-project view and are long-lived. We are actually looking into adding the concept of "saved views" to JWM to improve the concept of saved filters.

Currently we do not plan to add the nesting capability to filtering, however we would like to add it to saved views (aka saved filters) because the hierarchy is necessary to displaying a sub-project view. 

I am curious if that differentiation of of live vs saved filters functionality makes sense to you (and others) or if it's confusing. Would you expect to see hierarchy in live filtering - or is the need more around saved filters? 

[Markus Ernst]

@Meg ChristoliniThank you for pursuing this question. I would actually expect the hierarchy to be displayed in a normal search as well. I see no disadvantage here, only advantages. But I also understand the approach of using this feature only for saved filters (as a sub-project) and could get along with it.

[Gaetan]

Thanks @Meg Christolini for your comprehensive answer and for explaining live vs saved filters.

I agree 100% with @Markus Ernsten.

Some follow-up questions:

1. What is Atlassian's timeline to add saved filter views to JWM, enabling enhanced testing?
2. Will JWM saved filters views essentially be the same as the current views (especially: Timeline, List), with the same layout/features? Or will they be a "degraded" version of these views? I really hope it's the former.
3. Is there a ticket/thread to upvote and discuss this project?

Cheers

[Markus Ernst]

Hello @Meg Christolini thanks for the update on JWMCLOUD-111. Is your mention regarding the saved views/filter concept (with seeing the hierarchy) part of this issue and will also be rolled out? 

[Gaetan]

Hi @Meg Christolini kind heads-up on the above.

[Iain McCarthy]

Hi! Really pleased to see progress here, though somewhat baffled why it's being selectively applied on two of the views and not the one that's usually primary (the board).

The board does a nice job of nesting tasks/subtasks so would seem fairly Epic-rollup friendly? Any updates or sneak-peaks for Team 24 welcome, thank you! 

[Gaetan]

@Meg Christolini hi there, we'll keep sending reminders about previous questions. Would appreciate some follow-up.