How do you link a Story to a task in an import

[Jonathan Klug]

I am new to JIRA and am importing a number of tasks each of which relate to one of 10 stories and 5 epics. I am having trouble importing the tasks and linking them to a story and epic. Neither story or Epic appear as fields which you can select in the mapping. Here is the first few rows of my spreadsheet. I tried Link relates to the story which didn't work in the import but worked when I did it within a task itself. I would appreciate any help. It is likely I don't understand how Jira is structured. 

Story	Epic	Task	Issue type	Priority	Assignee	Status
Registration of User & Setups	Nurses	Confirmation	Task	Medium		TO DO
Registration of User & Setups	Nurses	Register - Independently	Task	Medium		TO DO
Registration of User & Setups	Nurses	Register - Part TWO	Task	Medium		TO DO
Login of user	Nurses	Launch Screen - Logged In	Task	Medium		TO DO
Login of user	Nurses	Login	Task	Medium		TO DO

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Are you trying to import these issues to a Team Managed project or a Company Managed project?

Jira has a built in issue hierarchy of

Epic > Generic Issue Types > Sub-task

At the Generic Issue Types level is where you find Story, Task, and Bug. These are considered "siblings" so you can't create a parent/child relationship between them. You can use the generic issue linking feature to create a link between any two issues, but it won't be a parent/child relationship. If you want the Task to be a "child" of the Story, then you need to create that information in a Sub-task type of issue.

How are you accessing the import function? It can be accessed from System Settings or from the Search Issue screen, but the functionality will be slightly different depending on how you select it.

If you are importing to a Company Managed project, you can make the issues from the Generic Issue Types group children of Epics by mapping a column to the Epic Link field. The column will need to contain the Issue Key for the Epic.

When importing Sub-tasks you would use map a column containing the Story's Issue Key to the field Parent ID.

More information on importing issues can be found here:

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-cloud-administration/docs/import-data-from-a-csv-file/

This applies to importing issues to a Company Managed project. If you are importing to a Team Managed project, the guidance is a bit different.

[Jonathan Klug]

Hi Trudy - thanks so much. I'm running a team managed project. Your explanation is very clear in that I didn't realise that Story was a sibling of Task. So what I'll do is use Epic/Task/Sub task. I was using the Import Issue function from the Create button. You've helped me a great deal - thanks again