Best Practice for Epics in new Jira Cloud Instance - Deprecation of Epic & Parent Link to Parent

[Tom]

Hello,

I'm returning to Jira after some time away however, this time I am the site admin.  I'm leveraging the capabilities of the advanced roadmap hierarchies and have just noticed some unexpected behavior with the Epic Link and Epic Colour when using a custom Epic Issue type.  I only have a handful of projects at the moment so, I just want to make sure what I am doing would be considered best practice.

I have a hierarchy level above the standard (Story) Issue type consisting of;

3. Strategy
   2. Initiative
   1. Epic / Work Package
   _ Stories
   _ Sub-tasks

We will be using Jira across software, electronics and mechanical design disciplines so, I want to use the term Work Package for the Epic Issue because this feels less alien to the team as a whole.  I was expecting to still include the term 'Epic' in the name so it would relate to in-built filters etc. and general given name for this Issue type within Jira.

1. I've noticed that Epic Link and Epic Colour isn't available for my new custom Epic.  I think I have my Issue screens correctly configured to show them.  I see the Epic Colour box next to the Epic Summary with the out-of-the-box Epic, but not with my custom Epic.
   Is this correct or am I missing something?
2. I've also noticed that the out-of-the-box Epic shows as grey, compared to my custom Epic (see image below).
   Is this normal or have I created it incorrectly?
   
   
3. I have just found out about the Deprecation of Epic & Parent Link to Parent here & here.  From what I can tell, Parent has traditionally been used to relate sub-tasks to Issues and the Parent Link is used to link Issues above Epics.
   What does this mean for me setting up a new Jira Cloud instance and should I be avoiding using some of these link types?

I haven't simply renamed the out-of-the-box Epic as my understanding until today was that I could have had more than one type.

In some respects, having a single name to link issues up the hierarchy makes better sense, it's not easy to explain the various link types to a new user - especially when I'm learning a lot of it for myself still.

Any help would be really appreciated.

[Tom]

I've just found this in 'Community Showcase' - maybe it holds some answers.