How do I restirct the child issues an issue type can have for a project

[Paddy Walsh]

I think I am trying to achieve something simple but I really can't see how to do it?

I can see that issue type schemes indicate which issue types a project can have. But how can I restrict the child issue types that an issue type can have?

There seems to be the assumption that an epic can have any issue type as a child, but I have created some new issue types that I do not want to be children of an epic - and I do not want to be able to create a Bug as a child of an epic.

How can this be achieved? Given that you can create new issue types, there surely must be some way to restrict where they are used?

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @Paddy Walsh 

Unfortunately there is no feature specifically for restricting what type of issues can be children of Epics.

The native Jira issue hierarchy is

Epics
|-- base level issue types (i.e. Story, Bug, Task)
    |-- subtask issue types

When an issue type is created and made available in a project, Jira allows the issue type to be used appropriate to its place in the issue hierarchy.

To prevent a specific issue type from being made a child of an Epic you would have to implement work arounds to try to prevent it (for instance, a Validator in the Workflow Create Transition) or to try to undo the linkage after it was created (for instance, using an Automation Rule to monitor for Bugs being made child issues of Epics).

[Paddy Walsh]

Thanks @Trudy Claspill .

I feared as much. Sadly we got Jira Premium on the basis that we could add additional issue types at the epic level but such issues are not really at the epic level as Jira allows you to create them as children of an Epic - very strange.

It seems that even though you can specify that new issue types are at the epic level they are still base-level issue types which is not at all what I expected.

[Trudy Claspill]

I have not worked much with AR and the extended Issue Hierarchy so I decided to test this out.

When I add a new issue type in the Issue Hierarchy at the same level as Epic, I am not able to then make that issue a child of the Epic issue type.

When I try to drag an Epic mark 2 type of issue into an Epic on a Backlog screen (for a Company Managed project), I get an error message and am not able to complete the task.

Are you working with issues in Company Managed projects?

Can you provide some screen images or steps to recreate the scenario where you are able to add such an issue as a child of an Epic?

[Paddy Walsh]

Actually, I am not able to add such an issue as a child of an Epic. If I select 'Add a Child Issue' when in an Epic I see the new Issue type in the dropdown list - suggesting I can add it as a child - the create screen appears but when I submit it nothing happens - it just hangs.

I am using company-managed projects.

This seems a little buggy to me - surely if you can't add it as a child then it should not appear in the list.

For other issue types, I can add validators as you suggest but that means someone has to complete the whole create screen before they are told they can't do it. Would seem to make more sense if you could just define the allowed hierarchy.

[Trudy Claspill]

I see you found the same post that I just found about limiting the types of child issues for an Epic.

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Software-questions/Limit-issuetypes-in-child-issues-section-for-an-Epic/qaq-p/2390137

I found this issue in the Atlassian backlog that is Closed/Timed Out which is similar to your scenario, but they actually were able to make the issue a child of the epic.

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSWCLOUD-19128

I have not yet found an issue for automatically constraining by the Issue Hierarchy configuration the types of issues that can be selected when using the Create Child Issue option from an Epic type issue. There may be such an issue and I just haven't located it.

But I would recommend that you contact Atlassian support to check with them to see if such an issue exists, and to get it added if it doesn't.