Creating Plans from selected epics in a board does not prevent other stories appearing

[Omar Erminy]

Hello,

I am creating a plan where the issue source is a board. I want to select only a few epics in that board and that works well at the beginning, but every time a new epic or story is created in that board it appears automatically in the board even though it was not part of the selected epics.

Is there a way to prevent this? I tried creating the plan from a filter but I lose the benefits of the Sprint planning or the velocity of the team.

Thanks

[Omar Erminy · Accepted solution]

I found a compelling way to achieve what I wanted. First I only wanted to have a subgroup of tickets/tasks not everything in the involved boards. However, I wanted to be able to benefit from the scheduling dates of the sprints in those boards whenever a task get's assigned to one sprint.

The solution was to create the Advanced Roadmap with the involved board AND a filter with the epics+stories I was interested in and then apply a filter on the result on "Issue source" and select only the filter.

This effectively prevented having the roadmap visibly updated with more epics, stories, etc created in the boards but unrelated to the project of interest. At the same time, having the boards as part of the roadmap allowed the scheduling to work as expected.

[Harriet King]

Hi @Omar Erminy I'm trying to do exactly what you've described, and I can't seem to achieve it.

I have two sources for a a plan:

1. Filter - to a specific Epic and the stories within it

2. Board - our sprint board, which I need for the scheduling element

You then mentioned: and then apply a filter on the result on "Issue source" and select only the filter.

How specifically did you do this? I can't see 'Issue source' as an option in the 'Filters' dropdown on the plan screen, or in the configuration of the plan (I can only add/remove sources entirely).

Any help would be really useful, thank you!

[Omar Erminy]

Hi @Harriet King

This filter that I mentioned is not in the configuration screen of the Plan. You will have to go the "Roadmap" view of the plan and check the "Filters" option (next to the Hierarchy definition). There you will see that one of the options is "Issue sources". There you will have the option of selecting the Jira filter you defined in your configuration.

Once you do this you shouldn't have the problem anymore of new issues appearing in the plan every time they are added on the board.

Let me know if this was helpful.

Cheers!

[Harriet King]

Hi @Omar Erminy 

Thanks for coming back to me - strangely I don't see this option here at all.. I attached a screenshot to check I'm looking in the right place?

Thanks

[Omar Erminy]

You are right, although I am not sure if you are in the Roadmap view. It could also be the case that this is different from version to version. We have the on-premise version. Maybe the cloud version is different.

At least from that screenshot you shared, mine looks slightly different.

Sorry I can't be of more help @Harriet King.

[Julio Verano]

I have had some success achieving what you describe by using the dependencies filter. 

See the below screenshot.  You will want to choose Dependencies, then select Specific issue and then find the Epic you want to filter to only see it and its child issues (what i blurred from our instance).  Note this is in JIRA cloud where its available.

You will then be able to see only that Epic and its child issues in your plan and then you can save that view. Note however the child issues will show slightly "greyed"  (as if the filter should include whats under them - which seems like a bug to me).

[Fabian Lim]

Hi @Omar Erminy

If you board only had selected epics you will have to ensure that they are included in the filter explicitly.

Your board filter will have to be something like this:

Key in (epic-xxx, epic-yyy) or "epic link" in (epic-xxx, epic-yyy)

This picks up the epics and issues linked to the epics.

I hope this helps.

[Omar Erminy]

Hi @Fabian Lim

I think this is not exactly related to my question. In the case of boards, your filter makes sense, but I am talking about the "Plans" feature. There you can create the plan based on Project, Boards or Filter. When creating it from a Board you can select the epics that are relevant to you, but if new epics or stories are created they are added to the Plan which in my opinion is misleading.

Is there a way to prevent this?