Can you move a parent task under another parent task in Jira?

[Youmna Alomari]

I was not able to move a parent task under another parent task in a Jira Work Management project. Is this something that can be done? 

Thank you!

[Ste Wright]

Hi @Youmna Alomari 

Do you mean within a parent/child relationship?

If yes, this isn't possible natively - you can either...

• Add a Sub-task (as a child)
• Add an Epic (as a Parent)

You can also link issues together (at the same level), using "Linked Issues" - it's a sibling relationship though (multi-to-multi) rather than parent/child (single-to-multi).

Ste

[Trudy Claspill]

adding to this...

The issue type hierarchy in the Jira Standard version is

Epic (level 1)
|-- standard issue types; i.e. Story, Bug, Task (level 0)
    |-- sub-tasks (level -1)

Issues in the same level can not be made parents of each other. An Epic cannot have another Epic as a child issue.

You can convert an issue to an issue type at a higher or lower level, such as converting a Task to a Sub-task, and then make the converted issue a child of another issue.

[Youmna Alomari]

Thank you @Ste Wright and @Trudy Claspill 

And when you say change the issue type, do you mean clicking on the '...' button on the right side of the ticket page and selecting 'Convert to Subtask'?

[Trudy Claspill]

That would be the option to convert a level 0 issue (standard level issue) to a level -1 issue (a subtask). However, if the task you are trying to convert already has subtasks itself, you will not be able to change it to a subtask.

To convert an Epic (level 1) to a standard level issue (level 0) you would need to use the Move option. However, if the Epic has child issues at level 0 and you change it to a level 0 issue, it will not remain a parent  issue to its former child issues.