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December 18, 2022 edited
Hi @[deleted]
These features haven't yet been rolled out to general access, so for most users they're not yet available. Have you enrolled in the Epic Renaming Beta?
If not, it's expected that all of these fields still exist as they did previously. If you are enrolled though, could you please give us a bit more detail about where you're seeing these fields still?
I'll also note that users enrolled in the Epic Renaming Beta are not currently able to add new hierarchy levels. We're also using Issue Status instead of Epic Status in the beta, so that may also be the issue you're running into there.
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
December 19, 2022 edited
Hi @[deleted]
Thanks for clarifying that you're enrolled in the Beta.
The fields you've mentioned should still exist, and we're not expecting to rename them. However, we're no longer using the contents of these fields to populate information relating to Epics. Instead this will be done with more general fields: - Epic Color -> Issue Color - Epic Link -> Breadcrumb parent switcher - Epic Name -> Issue Summary - Epic Status -> Issue Status
The beta also does not support using the renamed Epic issue type in workflows and automations.
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Just wondering when will this be rolled out to our instance. I have some Jira Cloud API scripts where we get the Epic Link of an issue OR get issues with JQL using Epic Link.
I would like to know how best to prepare and change the script and when exactly it will affect us.
Has this been released yet, we are trying to add a taxonomy of Epics, Features, Stories, and Tasks but are unable to at this time. We are on the advance version of JIRA Roadmapping
@Yatish Madhav - Regarding your JQL queries: you can continue to use the Epic Link clause, we won't be breaking the way these clauses work in existing JQL queries. Once these changes roll out though, you can use the parent clause in future queries for the same functionality.
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Thanks @Daniel Capizzi / @Rohan Swami - I am watching this article and have liked the original post so that I can be notified and kept on top of this. We are relying quite heavily on this change and want to prep early as we are rolling some new processes internally that makes use of the API to Epics and issue's Epics.
The links you've provided here are regarding the deprecation of the epic and parent link fields in our APIs which is separate to the Epic Renaming features described in this post.
The Epic Renaming features described in this post won't introduce any breaking changes to the way that you interact with your Jira site.
The pages you've linked however will introduce breaking changes to the way you interact with the API. If you're just using the API to make JQL queries which include the "epic link" clause this will continue to work, but any API calls where you're consuming the epic link field directly will break. These changes haven't been rolled out yet, but will soon so I would recommend working through the recommendations on those posts and ensuring your API calls are in order! If you have any specific questions regarding those please feel free to comment on those posts and our engineers can help you out.
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OK Thanks @Daniel Capizzi - I guess the 2 changes still confuse me as they both to do with Epics and seems like both changes will affect us.
Please advise what you mean by "consuming the epic link field"?
Currently we get Epic Link field key by the field name from all fields in the instance and then get an issue via the api and then extract the issue.fields.EpicLinkFieldKey value from it.
The other thing like I mentioned is we pull issues using the getIssues endpoint and use the "Epic Link" = ID - You said "Once these changes roll out though, you can use the parent clause..." Am I correct in saying that we cannot use parent in place of Epic Link right now in the JQL?
Regarding your JQL: that's correct, you can't yet use the parent clause in place of Epic Link, but we're working on rolling this out as soon as possible. However I'll highlight that your Epic Link clauses will continue to work as they did before.
I find these changes a bit confusing as I don't intend to rename the Epic issue type, but instead I'd like to add a new level above Epic called "Initiative".
In my current setup in Jira Premium, I have created a new issue type for Initiative and used Advanced Roadmaps to place it above Epic (see screenshot below). However, it seems that Initiative is not really natively considered the parent to be parent of Epics (see in the image below where there's a number "2" next to Initiative and a "1" next to Epic. Does that mean Epic is still considered the highest level in my hierarchy?
I am using the "Parent Link" field on the Epic level to link to the respective Initiative but I am not sure that's the correct way to do it?
Or will this feature not allow me to accomplish the desired goal here whatsoever no matter what I do?
It is a very common requirement in SAFE to place other levels above Epics. The part I am not understanding is how this featured announced by Atlassian will help this use case...
@Ricardo_Gomes Using the "Parent Link" field is the right way to link to issue types above Epic. The 2 you refer to represents the level above standard issue types (Stories, tasks etc.), as in: 2 levels above standard. Epic is always in the 1 level above standard and that can't be changed (though adding other issue types to that level is now available).
So from what you have said, you have already achieved your goal of having the Initiative issue type above Epic and you are successfully hierarchically linking from Epics to Initiatives via the Parent link field. If you wanted to create another level above Initiative, it would be level 3 and would also use the parent link field from Initiatives up to whatever issue type you choose to add to level 3.
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Hey @Rohan Swami - is it going to be possible to retain the ability to link issues to parents via a field either in the central block or in the right-rail? The 'new breadcrumb experience' is not what we want.
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January 15, 2023 edited
Hi @Haddon Fisher - thanks for getting in touch. It will still be possible to link issues to parents via the sidebar of the issue view - the epic link and parent link fields will be replaced by a single parent field that can be used instead of the breadcrumbs
My organization has Standard version of JIRA. I am looking for creating Epic->Feature->User story->Task. we wanted to connect the User stories through Feature and not directly to Epic. same way we need to create the task under User Stories. what I understand now is we need to buy premium version to achieve this. Should I go for premium version at this point of time ?
On the standard version of Jira it will be possible to rename your epic level, but to create the extra hierarchy levels as you've described in your comment you'll need to be on a premium version of Jira.
I will point out though that the features described in this blog post aren't yet available. While it's already possible to create extra hierarchy levels on premium, we're still working on the ability to rename the epic level, so the hierarchy configuration you've described is not yet possible unfortunately.
Currently we're expecting to roll these changes out in Q4, and you can keep an eye on these blog posts and our public roadmap for updates!
Usually SAFe is referring to SCALED Agile Framework (hence the need to reflect different levels of business requirements - from strategic to tactical). But I guess you are aware..... 🤞💪
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