Create a board showing epics?

[Joseph Verrico]

I can create a board showing stories for a project.  Can I create a board that shows just the epics for a project? 

[Layne_Sadler]

I would really like to do this as well. I have an epic for each of our platform team's major strategic elements. And I want to show how far along each of these epics are to the exec team!

This is almost a requirement for agile release trains aka program management, no?

[Kenny Song]

Go to configure board. 

On the General page update your query to filter on issuetype = Epic.

On the Columns page disable the Epic Panel option.

[Michael Schmid]

Disabling “Epic Panel” is the crucial information

[Liang Zou]

This don't work any more.

[allie ruby]

Issuetype does not exist

[Deleted user]

The best way I've found to do this is (as @Ben Davis mentioned above) to use a Kanban board.

To do this with just a filter view

Step 1:  Create a filter with 'type = epic' and save it.

Step 2:  When you're in the filter, click on 'Columns' and search for 'Rank' and check the box to add it to the view.  Sort in ascending order to have the highest ranked epics at the top.

OR Step 2:  Add to the filter logic in JQL 'ORDER BY Rank ASC'

One thing to note here is that if you want to change the order of the rank from this view, you can hover over an epic row, select ... when it appears on that row, scroll down in the drop down and select 'rank to top' or 'rank to bottom.'  Another way to change the rank order is to create a scrum or kanban board that references that filter, open the 'epics panel' (note: in a kanban board, you have to go into board settings -> columns -> turn on the kanban backlog by moving 'to do' status to the kanban backlog column -> select 'enable epic panel).  You can then move the epics up or down within the epics panel and it'll automatically change the rank so that when you go back to your filter, it's updated.

To this with a board (my preferred method)

Step 1:  Create a filter with 'type = epic' and save it.

Step 2:  Create a kanban board that uses the filter.

Now you can move the epics up and down within the kanban board (changing their rank) and/or move them to different columns to indicate whether they're to do, in progress, or done.

You can't do this with a scrum board (at least to my knowledge).

You don't have to enable epics panel or anything since the epics show up directly in the kanban board.  In fact, if you do turn on the epics panel (per the instructions above), it will not show you the epics in the kanban board itself - it will only show them in the epics panel.

Hope this helps!

[allie ruby]

For type = epic, what exactly do you mean? I'm in JIRA Data Center and can't find an option for type in the More dropdown.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

"type" is a shorthand for "issue type".  In JQL you can use issuetype = epic and type = epic to get the same thing - a list of epics.  The shorthand only applies in some places though.

[allie ruby]

Thank you for the prompt explanation. I don't believe this is available for Data Center.

[Geert Graat]

Hi,

Your board is based on a filter. If you change the filter to only return epics, your board will show just that. Alternatively, if you want to have a look at the epics but also need to see other issue types sometimes, you can create a filter that returns all the issue types that you need and create a quick filter for your board to only show epics. This way you can switch view between just the epics and everything that is on the board.

Regards,

Geert

[Joseph Verrico]

Updating the filter for the board was my first thought. Filter is where project = X and issuetype = epic. Does not work. Board does not show the epics like it shows issues. I just see the epics in the epics section as normal. I want to see epics in the board so I can move them to sprints, prioritize them, etc.

[Geert Graat]

You are right, epics are a special type which are always shown in the Epic panel. So the board does show all the epics in your project, but you cannot prioritize them or add them to sprints. You could use the classic board to prioritize the epics, but the classic board is about to disappear from JIRA Agile. Actually, the question is why you want to prioritize and plan epics in a sprint? Epics represent a large amount of work (larger than you can handle in a sprint), that is broken down in stories. Stories can then be prioritized and planned in sprints. If you are looking for roadmap planning, then maybe you should take a look at JIRA Portfolio.

[Joseph Verrico]

You are spot on. We are looking to do product roadmap / portfolio planning. We saw the presentation on Jira Portfolio. It looks like it will meet our needs very well. Unfortunately, we are using the Cloud version of Jira thus Jira Portfolio is not available for us. We don't even know when Jira Portfolio will be made available for the Cloud version. Funny that. Even though Atlassian has this great portfolio planning tool, they still cannot provide a release date for said tool in the cloud.

[Ben Davis]

I'm having exactly the same problem as you @Joseph Verrico. I want to show the list of epics for a number of projects in one filter so that I can generate a quick report for my PO. It will save me a lot of time. I can't find a solution. Have you had any luck?

[Ben Davis]

...and minutes after asking, I have a solution! I needed to filter where

'project = X AND issuetype = Epic

OR project = Y AND issuetype = Epic

OR project = Z AND issuetype = Epic...'

...repeat for as many projects as you wish to include in the filter.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Project in (x, y, z) and issuetype = Epic

is neater than chains of OR junctions.

Or even, assuming you are using project categories,

Category = <something> and issuetype = Epic

[MDP Scrum Master]

@Ben Davis @Joseph VerricoAny luck?? I need to do exactly the same!! "Updating the filter for the board was my first thought. Filter is where project = X and issuetype = epic. Does not work. Board does not show the epics like it shows issues. I just see the epics in the epics section as normal. I want to see epics in the board so I can move them to sprints, prioritize them, etc."

[Rachel Imbrogno]

I am having the exact same need. I am looking at using a board for a simple roadmap (columns represents the quarters).  Roadmap plugins and other apps are far too expensive for just the need of a simple roadmap tool.

Has anyone else found alternate solutions??

[Ben Davis]

@MDP Scrum Master, your scenario is a little different to mine. If you're only populating your board with Epics, Jira will only let you structure them on a KANBAN board. Instead you could try raising them as Stories which will then let you create a scrum board from which you can organise sprints. If you have both Epics and Stories on your boards, I don't have an answer for that, I'm afraid.

[kavi shree]

Just to mention that another user also have same request

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Software-questions/Quickfilter-on-EPIC-assignee/qaq-p/938511#M36644