Upcoming: The backlog epic panel will soon use epics' Issue status category

[Mpho Christina Roomane]

Hello @Irene 

Kindly advise if the Epic panel change impacts Data Centre hosted Jira applications?

Kind regards,

Mpho

[Irene]

Hi @Rosana Casilli , if that Epic already has the correct status category (i.e the Epic is indeed already completed), then you don't need to do anything else. These epics will no longer be shown on your Epic Panel in near future.

[Irene]

@Mpho Christina Roomane , no, this change only impact Jira Cloud. 

[Jaime Curtis]

@Irene  Hi, did this change roll out recently?

I am suddenly seeing Epics with Issue Status = "Done" show up in the Epic Panel, when they used to be excluded from the Epic Panel.

[Irene]

@Jaime Curtis , Not rolled out yet. If they are already rolled out, this Epic should have stayed hidden as I can see from the screenshot, the Epic issue status is Done. 

You might want to check a field called "Epic status" to see if that has been amended recently.

[Jaime Curtis]

I couldn't find an "Epic status" field anywhere in our project, and no one else is changing our settings other than me.

I opened JIRA one morning and it was different. So even though it's backwards from what this expected rollout is supposed to do, it seems like it might be a bug related to the rollout?

My only other hypothesis is that I think this happened around the same time I added a new "Done" status field - I added a "Won't Do" option. Is it possible adding this option broke things somehow? When I remove the option, it doesn't fix the problem though.

[Irene]

@Jaime Curtis , if you want to hide that Epic again, expand the Epic on the Epic Panel and click on "Mark as Done". 

This will mark the Epic Status field as Done and hide the Epic away. 

The Epic Status field is not shown by default. To have it shown on the issue screen, you can go to the three dots icon on Epic issue view > "Find your field" > Type Epic Status and follow the instructions to add it. 

However, this Epic Status field won't be used anymore so I don't suggest you add it to the Issue screen. This confusion is exactly why we want to move away from it. 

[Jaime Curtis]

Thanks for helping me with this!

I don't seem to have the "Mark as done" option:

I'm also not seeing an option to "Find your field" in the Epic issue view three dots menu:

When I search for "Epic status" in the Issue types configuration page, it isn't found:

I'm not sure if this is relevant, but when I go to the Timeline view, and set "Hide all completed Epic issues", these Epics are correctly hidden from the view. That implies to me that the Epics are actually being marked as "Done" and it's just something about the Epic panel that is displaying them when it shouldn't

[Irene]

@Jaime Curtis ah you are on Team Managed Project. 
My tips above are for Company Managed Project =) 

For TMP, an Epic will be shown on the Panel as long as:

1. Epic issue status != Done

2. There are still Epic child issues that are not marked as Done 

So can you probably check (2) Epic child issues, see if there are still any that are not yet marked as Done. 

[Jaime Curtis]

@Irene 

Hm, ok, good to know there's a difference.

I still seem to have a problem though.

I have 10 epics that used to be hidden from the epic panel and on the same day they all showed back up in the epic panel. I've checked through every one of those 10 and they are all marked Done, and all their child issues are marked Done as well. Here's a screenshot from one of the Epics:

[Yatish Madhav]

Hi. Not sure if I am alon on this but with opting into this I have been seing the below error on board or backlog a few times. A refresh or two usually fixes it. I hope this is not something that will push as it is rolled out to all sprint managing users. Thank you

[Jaime Curtis]

@Irene Good news - I tracked down the source of the bug. It appears the problem is in fact the "Won't Do" status I added to my workflow. I added it as another "Done" type status, but it appears that caused my tickets that were just marked "Done" to not actually be considered "Done". This definitely seems like a bug to me, and is annoying because it means I'm back in the boat of not having any option to mark a ticket as "Won't Do" vs "Done"

[Zack Foster]

Hello @Irene - When I try to bulk change all of my open Epics already marked as done, the bulk change wizard will only allow me to select one group of epics (grouped by workflow) at a time. It's like the UI will only allow one radio button to be selected across ALL the workflow groups. Am I really going to have to close each workflow group one one-by-one? 😬

[Yancey Larochelle-Williams]

@Jaime Curtis - You should be able to set that (Won't Do/Canceled/etc.) as resolutions instead. I think that's the current best practice for what you are trying to achieve.

[Brittany Tryon]

(Apologies if this was already asked and answered) What if I fall into this category...

If you have epics whose Epic status is not Done but the epic's Issue status category is Done, these epics may disappear from your backlog epic panel if all of its child issues are also marked as Done.

but I still want the epics to remain on the backlog panel AND keep all the child issues as Done? Happy to explain the use case if needed, but essentially I want the Epic to be able to remain In Progress and visible, and Child /Issue Task status not to impact it's visibility on the backlog.

[Matthew Downs]

Can I get early access?  This new feature will save me time immediately

[Staffan Redelius]

@Barbara Shaw This might be obsolete knowledge but I always set the Epic status "In progress" and "Done" as a post Function in the workflow for the Epic. 

[Semir Beganovic]

@Irene The feature to be able to export Sprint by Sprint to excel right from the board no longer appears with the new updates. That feature is very useful for my role. Will the feature be available or will we have to find other ways to export the stories from a Sprint? I am talking about the three dot icon.

[Alyssa Vassil]

@Irene Is there a more exact release date available yet?  I'd like to communicate to my teams a deadline for syncing that is clearer than "end of September".  Thanks!

[Irene]

Hi @Alyssa Vassil we will start rolling out this change mid-end next week.

[Irene]

@Semir Beganovic this change we are doing with Epic Status doesn't touch/impact that "Export Excel" option. That one looks to be a Marketplace app (probably "Better Excel Exporter"), so probably someone in your instance had uninstalled the app. 

[Irene]

@Brittany Tryon , 

but I still want the epics to remain on the backlog panel AND keep all the child issues as Done?

You can still do this, so all the child issues are Done, what you need to do is to keep the Epic issue status category as To Do / In Progress. This way the Epic will still remain on the backlog.

[Irene]

Hey all - just an update that this change will start rolling out from this week. It should take around 1 week to complete. Thanks! 

[Pierre Foucart]

I still don't know what problem this is solving - and I'm happy they are over 1 month late on this one.

[Gary Spross]

The problem this is solving is that there is no need for an Epic to have a secondary status (Epic Status). Instead, it will utilize the Issue Status like every other issue type does. This will avoid confusion because of the Epic Status not being in sync with the Issue Status.