Epic Link in Field Selection?

[Chris Ridall]

Could we add Epic Link to available fields.  Since work logged on epic sub tasks doesnt add up against the epic, when used with grouping its a great way to show work logged against a Epic.  Ive used this in dashboards with good effect.

[Volodymyr Krupach]

Hi Chris,

You are right. Epic Links should come with Epic Names. This will be implemented in future versions. Thank you for valuable suggestions!

[Chris Ridall]

This is fantastic, thank you.  I have tried it and it is working.  One small improvement I would make is that currently the EpicLink only brings back the IssueKey ie "DEV-3880", other plugins that have done this similar thing have brought back the the full Epic Name of the parent Epic issue ie. It would return "DEV-3880 Project Name".  I will have to match it up and do it by hand in spreadsheets as people I will be generating reports for will not understand what DEV-3880 is for example.  Thank you, again.  Even without the full name, the Data returned is what i needed.

[Volodymyr Krupach]

Hi Chris,

I am glad to notify you that Work Time Calendar Cloud 1.3.4-AC and Server 2.8.1 include support for Epic Link in spreadsheets. 

[Volodymyr Krupach]

Hi Chris,

Thank you for bringing this subject.

When we were implementing the Configurable fields we had doubts about Epic Link. The problem is that one issue can belong to many epics and so it's doubtfully how we should display the Epic Link and group by it.

For displaying we can show comma separated epics in one cell or repeat rows for each epic. When repeating the rows, probably only the first from the group should contribute to the Time column.

Approaches that can be applied for grouping (in case one issue belongs to multi epics): 

• We take only the first epic from every issue and ignore all other epics. This is the simplest and easiest approach and probably it will work for 90% cases.
• Each epic group should have a row for the issue. Here we have the problem with time: should the single issue contribute time only to the first Epic Link or maybe the issue should add time to subtotals of every Epic?

Chris, I will be very thankful if you share with us which scenario would work for you. We see that we need to have support for the Epic Link but we are not sure how to implement it. So any comments and ideas are welcome.

[Chris Ridall]

For Example I Use SUMUP for a Dashboard to do the following using Epic Links

EpicLink Name, Time Estimated, TIme Remaining, Time Spent, No Issues

I use a filter that selects just epic sub tasks for this, and i then get one entry for each epic, with a summed set of times, and count of issues.

What I really Want from yours is

Epic Link Name 1        Time Spent, No Issues

        User 1                3hrs            2

        User 2                2hrs            1

        Total                   5hrs            3

Epic Link Name 2        Time Spent, No Issues

        User 1                4hrs            2

        User 2                2hrs            1

        Total                   6hrs            3

Etc

That way i can print of timesheets for amount of work for each user on our projects (which we use Epics for)

Does that help ?

[Volodymyr Krupach]

Thanks for the detailed comment. One more question: do you have issues that belong to multi Epics?:

Epic1: Issue1, Issue2

Epic2: Issue2 (again), Issue3

[Chris Ridall]

No all issues are in single Epic

[Volodymyr Krupach]

Thank you for the info. We will implement Epic Link support in the next version.