How do I get 3 tiers in the Timeline view?

[Dan Spearing]

I need the equivalent of Epic -> Sub-Epic -> Tasks to show up in the Timeline view.

I know there aren't things such as "Sub-Epics" but I need another grouping issue type of some sort under Epics. Actually, I really don't care what the issue type is. I don't care if I have to create all of the issue types and define their hierarchy. I just need to have at least 3 tiers in the Timeline view. 

I'm pretty sure I can't use third party plugins because the ones I've tried do not meet our company's security standards.  

Seems like such a simple thing to support. What am I missing?

[Vishal Biyani · Accepted solution]

@Dan Spearing 

if you have JIRA premium or JIRA enterprise, then go to Seetings->IssueType Hierarchy.

Click on Create Levels. You can create a Feature and update your hierachy to be

Epic -> Feature -> StandardIssueTypes -> subTaskIssueTypes()

See if this works for you.

[Dan Spearing]

Thank you for response!

I'm new to this company and they have been using Jira for years. However, I suspect that there have been some changes/settings made over that time that they have been using that I may have to work around so I don't break their other projects. One is that it appears that they have created close to 100 custom issue types that are pretty much all at the same level.  I've been doing a lot of testing and it appears that another issue type (maybe more than 1) is showing up at the top level of the timeline that is in the same level as all the other custom types. In looking at the hierarchy, it appears that pretty much ALL of our custom issue types are at level number 1. However, not all of them show up in the top level of the timeline. 

1. Is there any way that I can modify the existing issue types that have been created (and heavily in use) to put them between the "epic" types and the standard issue types? Basically making some of those issue types at the "Feature" level you spoke of.

2. Since I'm using a Company managed project, would a change like this change other projects and prevent them from putting Stories under Epics?

[Dan Spearing]

Also, if I insert an issue type between level 1 and level 0, will that break all of my current issues? It appears that Jira strictly enforces single level hierarchy so a sub-task can't be a child of an epic. It would seem that if I had epics with standard issue type children that inserting an issue type between them would not be good. 

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Dan Spearing 

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

The native issue type hierarchy has just three levels:

Level 1 - the native Epic issue type
|-- Level 0 - "standard" issue types
    |-- Level -1 - subtask issue types

Jira does not support inserting levels between 1 and 0 or 0 and -1. With the Premium subscription it does support adding more issue types at each of those levels and adding levels above 1.

The parent/child relationship can be established only between issue types in adjacent levels. So a Level -1 issue can be a child only of Level 0 issues.

Addressing your question number 1, the answer is no. The issue type hierarchy is globally applied. If you movw any of the existing issue types to a different level the current parent/child relationships for issues of those types will be destroyed.

For your question number 2 all existing and future Company Managed projects using the issue types would be immediately affected by changes you make in the Issue Type Hierarchy.

With regard to your statements about the Timelines, how are you accessing those Timelines? With the Premium subscription there are two timeline features. One is a "basic" Timeline. You find that one when you are viewing boards that reference just one project. Those Timelines are able to show only the original, system-provided Epic issue type at the top level of the Timeline, and the issues that are children of those Epics.

There is a more robust Timeline feature available when you create a Plan though the Plans menu. Those Timelines can show all issue types and the hierarchy as it is set in the Issue Type Hierarchy.

If you want a hierarchy of 

epic > feature > story > subtask

And issue types with those names already exist, then to not impact any other projects you may need to create new issue types with different names.

When you create a new issue type you specify it as either Level 0 or Level -1.

After creating a new issue type at Level 0 you can then move that issue type to Level 1 or higher.

So. If an issue type named "Epic" already exists and is NOT positioned at Level 2, you would need to make a new Level 0 issue type with a different name (i.e. New-Epic) and then move it to Level 2.

If an issue type named Feature already exists and is NOT positioned at Level 1, you would have to create a new Level 0 issue type with a different name and then move it to Level 1.

If an issue type named "Story" already exists and is not positioned at Level 0 you would have to make a new issue type with a different name at Level 0.

If those new issue types are NOT added to the issue type Schemes used by existing projects then the existing projects will not be affected. 

[Dan Spearing]

Thank you for the response. This makes sense. 

Due to the "configuration" I inherited, I'm going to try and solve this by trying to adjust the hierarchy up, rather than down. 

It appears that the simple timeline that only shows Epics is the limiting factor so I will also have to also work with the Plan view as well.