Epics not showing EPICS sidebar in scrum board backlog and Tasks not showing at all

[Vincent B]

I created a new Scrum board for two projects, unfortunately, when going into the backlog I have the following issues:

• Some Epics show in the backlog and not in the EPICS sidebar
• Some Epics show as "unlabelled-PRJ-123"
• Issues linked to Epics do not show at all in the backlog

The filter for the Scrum board is very simple:

project in (Project1, Project2) ORDER BY Rank ASC

Any idea what is going on here?

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @Vincent B 

Welcome to the community.

What are the types of your projects - Team Managed or Company Managed? It will say at the bottom of the navigation pane on the left.

Based on what you have described, I think that you have created a filter that has one Company Managed and one Team Managed project in it, and used that to create a new scrum board.

Epics and their child issues are handled slightly differently in a Team Managed project than in a Company Managed project.

1. In a Company Managed project the field Epic Name is used in Epic issues. The Epic Name is the text that will display for the Epic in the Epics pane for boards that you create from saved filters. In a Team Managed project the Epic Name field is not used. Because it is missing, it is instead displaying "unlabelled-<Epic Issue Key>" text.

2. In a Team Managed project the issues in an Epic track the issue key of their parent Epic in the Parent field, vs. the Epic Link field which is used for Company Managed projects. In the boards you can make from saved filters, the ability to filter the issues list to child issues of an Epic by clicking the Epic in the Epics pane is based on finding the connection in the Epic Link field. Because that is not used for the Epic/Child relationship of issues in a Team Managed project, when you click on a Team Managed Epic in such a board then it will show no child issues in the issues list section.

3. For the Epics that you say are showing in the backlog and not in the Epics sidebar, those are likely Epics from the Team Managed project. I'm not sure what difference in the Team Managed project Epics accounts for this, specifically. But, you might want to double check the Issue Key shown for that Epic against the Issue Keys for the Epics shown in the Epic Pane. I bet that Epic in the backlog is one of the ones that shows as "unlabelled-<Epic Issue Key>" in the Epics pane.

[Vincent B]

Hello and thank you for your help, both projects are team-managed.

I have read what you mentioned about team-managed projects a few times and I am still not clear what needs to happen to make the scrum board backlog functional. If you do not mind me probing further:

• For point 2. So I can clearly see that only child issues NOT linked to Epics show in the backlog. ANY task linked to an EPIC does NOT show. I do not quite read if you are advising to do something or if there are no solutions.
• For point 3. Only one of the team managed project epics are doing this, the other project epics show in the backlog and not on the side bar.

I am still not sure overall why the EPICS sidebar does not work (for two different reasons) and why tasks are filtered if under and Epic.

Thank you.

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Vincent B 

Please provide the following:

- details of the filter you are using with this board

- a screen image of the Columns page under Board Settings

- a screen image from the "All Projects" screen where you have searched for each project so that we can confirm the type (Team or Company) of the project.

- A screen image of the Backlog screen making sure you do not have any filters selected in the Backlog screen (Assignee, Quick Filters) and that "All Issues" at the top of the Epics Pane is selected - showing enough information to show an example of an Epic that does have the problem and an epic that does not have the problem.

- Screen images of the two Epics that show the details of each Epic when it is viewed in Issue Details, so we can see enough information to compare the the child issues within each Epic to the image of the Backlog screen.

Also, can you please tell us if these projects are Software, Business, or Service Management projects? That will be shown at the top of the navigation pane on the left directly below the project name when you are viewing the individual projects.

Those details are needed to try to diagnose your scenario.

Based on my experience, there are certain aspects of functionality that I have found to be true when you try to display Team Managed project data in an agile board created from a Saved Filter. There may be something about the filter, or the column mapping, or the individual projects that is causing the difference in the handling of the data for each project in this Saved Filter board.

The architecture/design/fields of a Team Managed project are slightly different from a Company Managed project, and those differences impact the behavior of Saved Filter boards. If you have experience working with Saved Filter boards that are built from Company Managed projects, and the agile boards that are created automatically when you create a Team Managed project, you will find that each works for its respective project. But the Saved Filter boards will not work the same for Team Managed data.

Determining exactly what is happening in your scenario is challenging without being able to look around myself directly at the configuration of your board and projects. So, I need to ask you for the above additional data, and I was providing some explanation of the Saved Filter board behavior with Team Managed project data in hopes that would provide info to help you diagnose the issue.

At this point I am not suggesting you make any changes. I don't have enough information.

There are some functionality issues that can't be "fixed" when using a Saved Filter board with Team Managed data. When I have more information about your configuration I will hopefully be able to explain those more clearly.

[Vincent B]

Trudy, thanks for replying. This is an older issue and I don't work on the instance at this time.