Introducing the new Parent field in company-managed projects

[Lena Sargsyan]

Thanks for the update. It's a very useful update.
I would like to check if there is a way to change parent right from the issue view like it was possible in case of epic links.

Thank you !

Lena

[M Carolyn Eckstein]

Hi, @Irene – I created a new sub-task a few days ago while displaying a ticket (I clicked the "Create Subtask" button along the top of overlay modal). The parent-ticket is associated to an Epic Link, and the new "Parent" field got associated to a matching Epic value.

Today, I noticed my sub-task has no Epic. It did not inherit the Epic Link like all my past sub-tasks normally do. Its "Parent" is the parent-ticket. As is usual for sub-tasks, the Epic Link field is not displayed b/c you normally cannot set Epic Link for a sub-task (it inherits its parent-ticket's Epic Link).

How can I fix this? We don't like any Jira issues to unassociated to Epics, as these clarify where / how colleagues are expected to log their time. Thanks!

[David Shaw]

@Lena Sargsyan 

Yes, you can definitely change the parent from the issue view. You should see a Parent field in a similar position to the deprecated Epic Link field. If not, let us know. You can also change an issue's parent from the breadcrumb at the top of the issue view.

[David Shaw]

@M Carolyn Eckstein 

We're not clear on exactly what your problem is and would like a bit more detail.

Was the sub-task you created a child of a Story/Task or the child of an Epic?

It sounds like it was the latter and that both its epic link and parent were set correctly. Is that right?

If so, it sounds like the epic link field is no longer visible (or perhaps it says "Replaced by parent field" or similar). This is intended behaviour.

Your subtask should still have a parent Epic though, however this is now only visible in the issue view breadcrumb and the parent field. Is it visible there? That is, does it still have a parent, just not shown in an epic link field? Again, this is the intended behaviour.

If not, then does your subtask no longer have any parent at all? That would be a problem we'd need to follow up on.

Let us know and we'll do our best to figure out what's going on. If there is indeed no parent issue/epic at all, please raise a support request.

[M Carolyn Eckstein]

@David Shaw – Hopefully these screenshots will clarify. No, the sub-task I created was not a child of an Epic (I don't even know how to do that, and that hierarchy doesn't make sense — it's like a child belonging to its grandparent, skipping a level...).

I had a Task on my active sprint's Board. I displayed the Task, and pressed the "Create Subtask" button along the top. This creates a relationship with a new Subtask whose parent is the Task I was actively displaying.

So, the breadcrumb path is displaying correctly (Epic > Task > Subtask).

However, the Subtask is supposed to automatically inherit the Task's assigned Epic-Link, which it didn't do in this case.

[Erin Quick-Laughlin]

Hi @Irene - to second @Maria Emilia Sosa request - we too have a need to require the Parent field for specific projects.  At the moment, I believe all we can do is be pesky with Jira Automation, but not actually enforce a link.  Can we unlock this on Field Configs so that it can be required?

[David Shaw]

@M Carolyn Eckstein 

Thanks for prompt response; we're now clear on how you're creating your issues.

Subtasks in Jira do not natively "inherit" an Epic via their parent Task/Story. For example, you cannot set the Epic Link field on a Subtask. If a Subtask's parent issue has a parent Epic - a common enough situation - this 2-step relationship does exist (of course).

To help us understand what you're expecting to see, do you have a screen shot of a subtask and where you expect to see its parent's epic link?

Further, could there be some sort of automation adding the relationship you're talking about?

[Ray Hernandez]

Hi @Irene,

We now see the new Parent field in our environment. Though, we still see the old Epic link as well. Will this automatically be removed, OR should we also manually remove it from all screens so that the users use the new one?

Regards,
Ray.

[Dale G_]

Why was the decision made to make the Parent field read out as [Parent Issue Key][Space][Summary] and not to display the Parent's Summary like it would in a Kanban lozenge?

The Parent's Key is already listed within the listed hierarchy of the Issue, and this just makes the field superfluous as the field only contains the Key and a few other letters.

[Trey Santerre]

Is there a way to hide the KEY-### that appears at the start of the Parent Field?

Epic names were incredibly easy to read. Now with this change the KEY-### takes up 50% of the spacing which means the actual Epic names can't be read.

[S. Francoeur]

Hi @David Shaw,

We have the same issue that @Dale G_ and @Trey Santerre reported, preceded by [Issue Type Icon] and some whitespace. The Icon and Key of the parent issue are already in the bread crumbs and, IMHO, need not be repeated here. 

By the way, it would be nice if the bread crumbs would show the full hierarchy when viewing an issue, regardless of level. The [Epic-level Issue] is missing from the bread crumbs when viewing a Subtask-level isssue:
Projects / [Project Name] / [Task-level (parent) Issue] / [Subtask-level Issue]

Will this be fixed or is there a corresponding Suggestion to vote for?

[Mateo Tojeiro]

Hola! veo una épica en mi tablero dentro del carril "Incidencias sin épica" ¿cómo hago para corregir eso?. Gracias!

[Paul Stahlke]

Can we please have the new Parent field available in the Field Configuration schema, so that we can set it as required?

[David Shaw]

@Ray Hernandez 

It's safe to remove the Epic Link field from screens where the Parent field now appears, especially if it's causing confusion.

We are working on disabling (or hiding) the Epic Link field and generally we've done so, however there are a couple of tricky cases left to resolve.

[David Shaw]

@Trey Santerre @S. Francoeur @Dale G_ 

Thanks for the feedback regarding the presentation of the parent field, eg. the issue key prefix. We've noted this and will review whether we can improve matters here.

CC: @Irene 

[Maykol Álvarez Parra]

Hi, we did tests after these changes because we have rpa bots running with modified fields.

The tests were positive without making any modification from our side.

Therefore, I have a doubt, many times at provider level at backend level they leave the modified fields active (hidden) and at visible level the modified ones. So I would like to know if this is the case, to ensure that the tests we did were really correct and not that both modified and unmodified changes are actively working,

please help me with this doubt

@Irene  @David Shaw 

[Etienne Viljoen]

I can't seem to add the new "Parent" field to the Create Issue screen. I can change the screen with other fields, and I have added "Parent" but it is just "left out" of the fields displayed on the Create Issue screen, when using https://xxxxxxx.atlassian.net/secure/CreateIssue.jspa

[Krupasindhu Nayak]

Why the parents are not searchable sometimes with lowercase. Is this case sensitive?

[NiYunfan]

When selecting a parent, is there configuration that can be made to give preference to items from the same project that the child ticket is in? 

Team is now finding when searching for an epic name it is returning items from many different projects as top results rather than items from the project the ticket belongs to. 

[julia.pacula]

Hi, in our project we use developer API to open JIRA create issue dialog (with method openCreateIssueDialog), but this screen does not include Parent field. I have explicitly added "Parent" field to issue screen, but it does not show up (similar to @Etienne Viljoen problem). In dialog opened by "Create" button in JIRA header, the field is visible.

How can we fix it? Does it depend on our implementation or requires newer JIRA developer API?

[roonski]

Just a minor point, but from a user point of view I don't find it helpful at all to change "Epic Link" to "Parent". Epic is the actual useful concept I think about, not some technical "parent".

So I guess it can under the hood still be a "parent" but I'd much rather it be CALLED epic because that is the actual user-oriented concept being linked.

(In addition, I think of Epics as basically arbitrary categories/tags of anything, but I see that JIRA doesn't really support that idea at all.)

[M Carolyn Eckstein]

@David Shaw – I'm quite perplexed. This behavior (a subtask automatically inheriting its "parent" task's assigned Epic-link) has only been the way Jira has operated since I started using it over a decade ago (Server-version, and now Cloud).

Perhaps I'm not describing it clearly, or using the wrong terminology? I hope this screenshot illustrates what we're experiencing.

This is how it has always worked for me — I have a Task, from which I create a new Subtask, and it always appears within the same EPIC swimlane. Now, when I create a new Subtask, it appears at the bottom of our Board under "Issues without Epic" swimlane.

[David Shaw]

@M Carolyn Eckstein 

Thanks for the detailed response; I understand what you're talking about now. It does sound like there's been a change in behaviour if subtasks are no longer included in swimlanes. Given that it's possible we've introduced a bug, could you please raise a support request. Please include the info from your last comment and mention this is related to the "epic renaming" rollout. This should find its way to the right people.

[David Shaw]

@Krupasindhu Nayak 

> Why the parents are not searchable sometimes with lowercase. Is this case sensitive?

Are you referring to when you look parents up by their issue key. That is, if you search by "PROJ-" then parents are found, however if you search by "proj-" they are not. If so, that's a known bug and a fix should be rolled out next week sometime.

If not, can you give some info on your problem.

Thanks

[David Shaw]

@Etienne Viljoen 

The parent field should be visible on the Issue Create screen. Could you raise a support request so that this can be followed up properly.

Thanks