Why do some epics disappear from the epics panel when status is changed to Done, and some do not?

[Kitty Crawford]

In my backlogs epic panel, I'm finding that sometimes when I put an epics status into 'Done', the epic will disappear from the panel, and sometimes it will not. I'd like for them all to disappear, so that the next epics to focus on are at the top, but I can't seem to find a reason so to why some disappear and some do not, even after some googling and asking in discords about the issue.

In terms of testing, I always make sure linked issues are also in done so the entire epic is 'done' when I change the actual epics status. I'm just not sure whats different from one ticket over another.

[Christopher Maxwell · Accepted solution]

Hi @Kitty Crawford ,

Are you working with a Company Managed or Team Managed board? Also, is it Kanban or Scrum?

UPDATE - looks like Trudy just posted some great info here.

[Kitty Crawford]

It's a team managed project, and we're using kanban board by the looks of things?

[Christopher Maxwell]

Hi @Kitty Crawford ,

I did some testing to confirm on this, and for Team Managed Kanban, backlog, epic panel:

• Marking all issues as done but epic still "in process": epic displays
• Marking epic as done but an issue in epic still "in process": epic displays
• Only way to get the epic to no longer display is when the epic and the issues within it are all complete

There is sometimes a slight delay and/or a refresh of the page required.

I also tested on a Scrum board, and the Epic will always display if any issues are in the current sprint. Are you using Sprints? Is it possible that the completed Epic has issues in in an active Sprint?

[Kitty Crawford]

Yeah, so this all sounds logical, but this isn't whats happening for me.

For example, here is an epic where I have put the epic into done, all of it's related tasks are in done, and there are no more tasks in the backlog or sprints, but it's still showing in the epics panel:

So if those are the rules, they aren't applying consistently for me for some reason.

[Christopher Maxwell]

@Kitty Crawford Hmmm... I'm scratching my head with you on this one. It's a puzzle.

If you are on the paid plan I recommend you reach out to Atlassian support as a low-priority request. They are phenomenal and should be able to get you an answer as to what is going on. Then please report back here to update the community! I'm subscribed to this ticket and will be interested in knowing what you discover.

[Kitty Crawford]

np Christopher will do! Thanks for trying =]

[Kitty Crawford]

ok super interesting results! I had created my own done statues called 'won't do' and 'could not reproduce', but they weren't flowing into the done status as I thought properly, so even though I couldn't see them, they were carrying over from sprint to sprint! Here's the techs explanation:

[Christopher Maxwell]

@Kitty Crawford That's great! Thank you for sharing. 

[Christopher Maxwell]

@Kitty Crawford Oh, and don't forget to mark this ticket as answered!

[Kitty Crawford]

Done!

[Kamil Zatorski]

IMO these conditions must be met that epic disappear from the epic board:

• Marking all issues as done
• Marking epic as done
• there are no tasks in any Sprint, nor Product Backlog from this epic (i.e. even if you have already closed all tasks, but not closed Sprint, it is still visible)

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Kitty Crawford 

Are you working with a Company Managed project or a Team Managed project? That information will show at the bottom of the navigation panel on the left.

Currently for Company Managed projects Epics have a secondary status field named "Epic Status". The "Epic Status" field is used to determine if the Epic should display in the panel or not.

By default this field is not displayed in the Issue Details for Epics.

There are two ways you can manage this field.

You can use the Mark As Done option from the Epic Panel itself to set the "Epic Status" field to Done and remove the Epic from the panel.

My preferred method is to update the Workflow used for Epic type issues and set Post Functions on all the transitions so that "Epic Status" is automatically set to Done when Epics transition to a done status, and automatically set to To Do when Epics transition to a not-done status.

[Kitty Crawford]

We're on a team managed project,  I don't have that drop down on epics