How to restrict the `Epic Link` issue field to only Epics in that project?

[IBrown_BluePrint]

We have between 30 and 50 active projects at a time and a project lifecycle is about 1 year. Each project has a handful of epics open at any given time. We would like to assign every issue to an epic via the `Epic Link` field when the issue is created.

Currently, this is untenable; the drop down populates with hundreds of epics from unrelated projects. We specifically want to avoid creating and enforcing cumbersome naming conventions to sort the list.

It is my understanding that this field and its behavior are locked by Atlassian and that they have resolved tickets related to this by simply saying its the desired behavior. It is also my understanding that I could create a new field that IS filtered and then use the selection of its value to set the Epic Link value. How do I do that? Can I do it without paying monthly for some 3rd party service (aka without scriptrunner)?

[Trudy Claspill]

I don't believe you will be able to do this without paying for a third party service.

You need to be able to create a custom field that will provide you a list of issues from which to select based on criteria. Jira Cloud doesn't support that natively and I don't see any work around with native functionality. You will need a third party app to create that field. There are several apps that may provide that functionality. Here is a search from the Marketplace:

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/search?hosting=cloud&product=jira&query=issue%20picker%20field

Once you have that field and fill it with the Epic issue key you desire, you would use the Automation for Jira native feature to copy that data from that field to the Epic Link field.

Note this will work only in Company Managed projects.

If you are using a Team Managed project, those don't use the Epic Link field. Instead the Epic key is stored in the Parent field.