Issue Hierarchy customization for team managed projects

[Martina Amui]

I am managing a team-managed project. Currently, I have the standard Issues and hierarchy levels that Jira provides [i.e. Epic (1), story/task/etc (0), subtask (-1)].

I am looking into creating a level 2 (higher than an Epic) to create Initiatives to group my Epics, but do not seem to find a way. I configured this in the Jira settings, but I am not finding a way on how to apply these new hierarchy level to the project settings.

Appreciate any insights or ideas on how to manage this or work around any Jira limitations.

[Martina Amui]

Thanks for both replies!

On @Trudy Claspill 's suggestion, I was able to set up the workaround, however I am a little concerned that not having the issues under the same project key will affect the sprint reports and project data.

I was also able to set up a test company-managed project, and given the fact that I am also allowed to become a Jira administrator for the Jira in question, I believe that changing to a company-managed project will work for us, as it will also be customizable with Jira admin permissions :) 

If you have any suggestions for this migration, please let me know!!

Thanks again for the help

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Martina Amui 

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

It is not possible to extend the issue type hierarchy for a Team Managed project directly in the Team Managed project. But there is a work around.

The work around is to create the higher level issue type in a Company Managed project, and use a Plan to link the Team Managed Epic to the higher level issue type in the Company Managed project.

This work around is described in this article:

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Advanced-planning-articles/Parenting-a-team-managed-epic-with-a-company-managed-initiative/ba-p/2638197

[Ingo Syllwasschy]

Oh, cool! But unfortunately also not in the standard plan. 🤷 @Martina Amui Which plan are you using?

[Trudy Claspill]

@Ingo Syllwasschy 

Correct; extending the issue type hierarchy is available only in Premium and Standard plans.

Martina indicated that the Premium plan is being used.

[Trudy Claspill]

@Martina Amui 

If you intend to move your issues from your Team Managed project to the Company Managed project you could experience data loss. Review the following article.

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/migrate-between-team-managed-and-company-managed-projects/

I suggest that you do some testing with issues in a non-production Team Managed project to see what will happen before moving any issues from your production Team Managed project. Since you have a Premium subscription (according to your post tags) you may want to test in a Sandbox environment where you can have a copy of your production data.

[Ingo Syllwasschy]

Hi Martina, 

The decisive sentence in the documentary - Configure the issue type hierarchy - is this one:

Jira Premium and Enterprise customers can also create and manage additional levels in their issue type hierarchy.

From restrictions with regard to Team / company managed projects there is nothing there. That's why I assume you're using the standard version, right? In that case, you won't find a solution.

Best regards 

Ingo

[Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira]

Hi @Ingo Syllwasschy

if you'd like to stay on the Jira Standard plan, however are open to solutions from the Atlassian Marketplace, you may want to have a look at the app that my team and I are working on, JXL for Jira.

JXL is a full-fledged spreadsheet/table view for your issues that allows viewing, inline-editing, sorting, and filtering by all your issue fields, much like you’d do in e.g. Excel or Google Sheets. It also comes with a number of advanced features, including support for (configurable) issue hierarchies. These issue hierarchies can be based on Jira's built-in parent/child relationships (like task/sub-task, or epic/story), and/or based on issue links of configurable issue link types. 

This is how this looks in action:

In this example, I've created three more issue types (in this case, Objective, Program, and Initiative), created the relevant issues, and connected them to each other (as well as to their epics) via issue links. I've then modelled this hierarchy in JXL, and voila. This works for all Jira plans, including the Standard plan.

Any questions just let me know,

Best,

Hannes