Why is the parent task lost when I convert a sub-task to task

Question

Hello, I have a next gen Jira project. I had to import a large number of issues - epic/story/task - and encountered the issue that I cannot import tasks, I could only import sub-tasks if I wanted to link them to a parent *story* during the import (how does this make sense?). So now I am trying to change the sub-tasks to tasks but I noticed that when I do that, the parent-child relationship between my sub-task and its parent story is lost in this move. Now I am trying to manually change the parent of the task back to the story and I cannot do that since I only have an option to change the parent to an epic.

How can I accomplish what I need - I need to convert a sub-task to a task and keep its parent relationship to its parent *story*.

Alternatively, I could potentially re-import all my tasks as tasks (instead of sub-tasks) if someone can tell me how to do that using a csv import... Again, I want to assign a parent story to them during the import process.

The original reason I want to convert sub-tasks to tasks is that I cannot seem to be able to add sub-tasks to the Board - seems like I can only add stories and tasks to the Board. Is it possible to add sub-tasks to the Board?

Thank you

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

Oh grow up, the nature of the requirement demands it is done this way.

DHSV · Answer

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

There's a bit of history of architecture in this question, which I'd normally not bore you with, but here it's helpful in framing the answer.

With Jira Server, and hence Cloud "Classic" projects, Jira had a simple hierarchy of "Issue" and "Sub task".  These were not the issue types, but a classification of the types.  If you work with a classic or server project, you can have many issue types and all of them have to be classified as one or the other type.  Typically, you'll find things like Issue, Story, Feature, Bug etc are "Issues" and Sub-task, Technical-task, Work-fragment etc are "sub tasks".  There's even JQL functions you can use like  "issuetype in subTaskIssueTypes()".

The difference between the two layers of issue type is the parent-child relationship.  An issue-layer issue has no parent issue, but can be a parent.  A sub-task-layer issue is a child, it must have a parent and it can not be a parent.

Now, I think what you have is defined "Task" as a issue-layer and "Sub-task" as a sub-task-layer issue.  (I think this is forced on you by Next-gen projects - last time I looked, they only allowed "sub-task" as a sub-task-layer)

So, when you convert sub-tasks to tasks, they change layer.  As they're now issue-layer, they can no longer be part of other issues, so the link to their old parent has to go.

So, to answer the questions directly:

> need to convert a sub-task to a task and keep its parent relationship to its parent *story*.

You can only do this if your task issue type is at the sub-task-layer.  (And in your system, it is not)

> I can only add stories and tasks to the Board. Is it possible to add sub-tasks to the Board?

No, because sub-tasks need to be created within the context of their parent issue as well as the board.  (There is an open request somewhere for "a link on a card that would allow us to create sub-tasks for the issue without opening it")

> csv import

Yes, you can do this.  Your CSV will need a column to indicate which parent issue each sub-task belongs to, and you can map that on to "parent"