How to set story as a parent for task

[Martin]

In last year Parent field was introduced.

When creating new task/story Parent field only offers to select Parent from a list of epics. But want to create new task with parent as story. How can I change the selection list?

I understand its related to issue type hierarchy, but can't change that.

In my understanding all the point of introducing general Parent field was to combine Epic Link and Parent Link functionalities, making it much clearer.

Or am I getting the purpose of Parent field wrong and those using it as not intended? 

[Evgenii · Accepted solution]

Hi, @Martin 

If you have Premium plan, you can change hierarchy, and add Tasks to level above Stories (or any other way). But it's not worth of it, because it affects whole Jira, not separate projects. Better use issue linking.

[Thiago Schmid]

I see what Martin means and I'm having the same issue.

We have projects internally that require multiple levels for the issues. Currently, this affects navigating between issues and mainly the list views.

What I believe Martin mentioned and I'm also looking for is the following:

Epic (Parent of the story below)

    ↳ Story (Parent of the task below)

             ↳ Task (Parent of the sub-task below)

                        ↳ Sub-task

At this moment the Issue type hierarchy does not allow you to put anything below Epic. And using issue linking does not display the hierarchy in most of the views (e.g. list view). Also when opening e.g. a Task issue, the Parent field is empty and you can only set an Epic or Epic-Level issue type as parent.

The above limitation basically locks all Jira projects to have a maximum of 3 hierarchy levels (considering you don't want anything above the default Epic).

Would be nice to have the freedom to set any hierarchy you wanted.

[Daryl WH]

This is 100% needed IMO. we faced the same challenge and ended up using the Epic - Story -Subtask structure, and will use components and labels to increase visibility. Extra effort for seemingly little or no reason.

[Walter Buggenhout]

Hi @Martin,

As of today, the 3 lowest levels of the issue hierarchy are still fixed in Jira (despite of the parent - child update). As you can see from your screenshot, adding new levels to the hierarchy will create additional entries above the epic level, not in between the existing Epic > Task / Story / Bug / ... > Sub-task levels.

Historically, Jira has been using different link types between Task & Sub-Task, between Epic & Story and between Epics and their additionally configured parent levels. Making these link types the same across all levels may become a game changer in time, but the adding tasks below stories is not possible yet.

Hope this helps! 

[Martin]

So in my case (wanting to set Story as Task parent) using Parent field isn't correct and can't be done?

[Yevgeniy Pinchuk]

Martin I do not think so, we are working through the same issue. We can set an Epic as a parent of a Task but we cannot set a Story as a parent of a Task.

Which makes me wonder why the introduced the Parent Link in the first place?

[muthuraman0908]

Any luck on the above hierarchy implementation?

Even with a premium plan we couldn't create the hierarchy! 

[Jason Cox]

I am having this same problem even with Premium. 

[Ritika Wadhwa]

I am also facing this. In my opinion, A subtask created from a User Story should be allowed to add that User Story as a parent instead of EPIC. Agree what is the point of introducing adding Parent and limit it only to EPIC.

[Allie Micka]

The 'Create Parent' field should be able to use (and only use) work items of an accepted parent type. It should not allow me to add Epics as parents for Subtasks, and it should not restrict me from adding Stories for those same Subtasks.

I am migrating from a different system: I am creating Epics, Stories, and sub-tasks. In the hierarchy screen, it appears that I should be able to add sub-tasks to Stories, and Stories to Epics. And I can do this manually by creating a Story and adding Subtasks to it.

But in my import, I am populating a CSV with "Parent Link" -> <STORY> on rows where Work type = SUBTASK and it throws an error.

Once the orphaned subtask is imported, I also cannot edit it manually and assign a parent that is any type other than an Epic.

HOWEVER, I CAN edit a Story and add Subtasks to it!

This is a major bug, given that I am not able to migrate into a hierarchy that matches what can be created manually.

[Manon Bourgeois]

Same here. with Premium.