Epic Link & Parent Link movement to Parent

[Magdalena Zhisheva]

Hi all, 

How did you get prepared for the Epic Link & Parent link removal and replacing them with Parent field?

I went through all documents but still do not get it, for example: https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/maintain-epic-link-data-for-issues-above-the-epic-level/ here, there is a script 

issuetype in (<LIST OF ISSUE TYPES>) and "Epic Link" is not EMPTY and I assume that we need to perform some changes in the issue types above our epics, i.e. in our case initiatives. 

But still I do not get what should be done. In the same page there is the following: 

Maintain epic relationships

There are two approaches you can take to maintain the epic relationships on affected issues:

• If your issue hierarchy is important in its current form, you can add the epic as a linked issue (e.g. relates to).

OR

• If your epic link data is important to maintain, you can move any affected issue types to the base level in your issue hierarchy.
  
  If we add the epics as a linked issue to the Initiatives we will use the hierarchy between them in Advanced Roadmap and we do not won't to have this case. Currently, we are using parent link for having the linking between Initiatives and Epics.
  P.S. Parent field can't be added to the project screens.
  
  So, the question here is how did you prepared yourself for these changes?
  Any directions will be useful!
  
  Thank you all in advance! 

[Peter Tung]

Hi all,

Did this change ever made into production?  Epic link and Parent link still seem to present as they always were.

Cheers

[Ilinka Danova]

I think it's making it into production now/soon as I've started noticing warnings on automations.

Epic Link will soon be replaced with Parent. Update to Parent field to prepare for these changes.

[Anne Jang]

Hi @Magdalena Zhisheva 

In most cases you don't need to do anything, your epic link and parent link data will be migrated to the new parent field.

The only case we won't migrate is if the field data does not conform to the hierarchy configuration i.e the epic link or parent link value is not on a higher hierarchy level than its child issue.

For example, say you have an initiative issue type on the level directly above the epic level. An epic can then have a parent of the initiative issue type.

If you have any initiatives with an epic link field value, these values will be considered invalid since an Initiative shouldn't have an epic as its parent.

To find out if you have any issues that have epic links that will not be migrated over, you can use the query provided:

issuetype in (<LIST OF ISSUE TYPES>) and "Epic Link" is not EMPTY

For any issues that are returned by this query, you can:

Remove the epic link field value (and add a different issue link e.g. "relates to" issue link)

OR

If you wish to keep these epic link data, you can move your initiative issue type to be on the story level.
However if you do this, it could result in other invalid relationships e.g. any epics that have a parent of initiative will now lose its parent relationship as it no longer conforms to the hierarchy configuration.

[Raymond Virzi]

I don't use premium. I was just about to start using Epic Link as a way to filter on all issues that belong to a given Epic. The Epic link was perfect since it doesn't matter how many levels down the issue is. Are they going to break this? Will there be any way to filter on the issues belong to an Epic?

[Magdalena Zhisheva]

Hi @John Funk ,

Hope this will be the case...I am a little bit worried about this steps described regarding the epic relationships maintenance, so I decided to look around in the community if somebody is preparing their instances as well.

Cheers,

Magdalena Zhisheva

[John Funk]

My understanding was that nothing needed to be done right now - they would try to update everything first. 

[Magdalena Zhisheva]

Hi @John Funk , thank you for your reply!

I made a review on that but still I do not get what needs to be done with the hierarchy between Epics and the level above it, i.e. we use Parent Link at the moment to Link the epics and initiatives but if Parent link will be deprecated, then what? Will it be automatically replaced with Parent instead? 

It's interesting for us how the other Admin prepare their instances for these changes without hours of work :) Any tips & tricks will be useful :)  

[John Funk]

Hi @Magdalena Zhisheva 

Maybe take a look at this guidance.

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Software-articles/Upcoming-changes-to-epic-fields-in-company-managed-projects/ba-p/1997562