Issue Hierarchy with optional level

Hi

We have an issue hierarchy defined as follows

Portfolio
---- Program
--------- Initiative
------------- Epic or Master Epic
---------------------- Epic
-------------------------Story etc

As you can guess, the problem lies in the Epic or Master Epic level. We have a requirement to allow and Epic to be linked to either a Master Epic or an Initiative. Therefore Epic appears at multiple levels in the issue hierarchy. We have added javascript customfields and successfully implemented the Portfolio, Program and Initiative levels. But adding the Master Epic level does not work and I read in one support forum answer that this scenario is not catered for.

From my point of view the use case is no different to a Story as it can also have an optional parent of Epic, can be standalone, or can be linked to another issue.

Can you confirm if this use case is supported?

If not, can you suggest a workaround?

Thanks
Chris

1 Like

To clarify - we are using issue links and not using Advanced Roadmaps.

eazyBI builds a hierarchy with a strict structure. You can define levels and set the issues of a specific issue type on a particular level.

You can define a hierarchy with levels:
Portfolio
---- Program
--------- Initiative
------------- Master Epic
---------------------- Epic
-------------------------Story etc

In this setup, Epic should always be on the level below Master Epic. The hierarchy supports the scenario when some epics might be directly linked to Initiative or to Master Epic.

However, there is a problem, though. eazyBI allows importing a link directly linked to one level above, but when we pass down values for a hierarchy with a parameter update_from_issue_key the value is deleted due to the missing direct parent level.

Here are two workarounds. They both require the calculation of level Initiative for Epic issue and Master Epic issue explicitly.

  1. define a custom field Initiative in Jira and use some scripting to calculate the Initiative issue key both for epic and master epic. You should have value in custom field Initiative for any Epic, no matter if the epic is directly linked to Initiative or via Master Epic.

  2. you can use double links for Epic. If the Epic is linked to Master Epic now add the Link to Initiative for the same Epic as well. Then you can use the default issue link import option. Any Epic will have a reference to Initiative.

With both workarounds described above you would like to use a reference of Epic level instead of a master Epic level in a parameter update_from_issue_key for a custom field Initiative as well.

Daina / support@eazybi.com