Is anyone else really frustrated with the cross project parent/child linking?

[orla_mears]

Before I start, I'm really trying to get to like the recent changes Atlassian have made recently, but the struggle is real!

My biggest gripe is that over the last few months, I find I am unable to link cross project epic child work items to parent initiatives (from within the initiatives themselves)

This was a fundamental part of our reporting, and gave us the ability to add a chid work item within the Initiative but alas no more! The only workaround I've been advised is that we add Epics and other work items as issue types into the project (but don't have to use them which sounds like a crazy workaround, given that we have Epics and other work items set in our main hierarchy settings)

I really don't get how there would have been so much feedback from users that would have influenced Atlassian's decision to remove the ability to cross link child/parent work items, it's resulting in our team linking chid issues in many other random ways now.. making much more work on my side to fix it up!

[Tomislav Tobijas · Accepted solution]

@orla_mears 😮

How are you unable to link Epics with upper hierarchy levels?? I mean, we use this in almost all Premium implementations, and I haven't heard this is going away 🤔

I mean, what's the point of hierarchies if you don't have that?

We do struggle with not having the option to link/create child items from Initiatives if Epics are in different Jira projects, but a workaround is to use Plans in these scenarios.

Currently, we do have Parent field added to each Epic work type layout and then link Initiatives that way also.

[orla_mears]

@Tomislav Tobijas it's not that I am completely blocked, but it seems like removing the ability to Add a child work item from another project to an initiative, from within the initiative seems to be moving back 10 years if I'm honest!

Give the scenario - when we're in a meeting looking at our planning for next cycle, we are looking at 30+ initiatives.  Previously, I could go in and add any child issues regardless of project, which was an efficient way instead of having to go to each individual child work item/add parent etc. If there are several epics that I have to attach, it becomes a very laborious meeting.

Right now I don't see the point in having an  "add child work item" option within initiatives, if you can't link child items unless they're from the same project.

[Tomislav Tobijas]

@orla_mears got it! Thanks for clarifying 🙌

And I surely agree—we've received multiple requests for the same thing from our clients. After chatting with Atlassian Support, they've routed me to the following item (although I'm not sure if this is 100% relevant to the requirement): JRACLOUD-93071: Decouple "Choose an Existing Issue" Visibility from "Create Child Issue" Button for Parent Issues 

Again, we're pointing users to use Jira Plans, but I agree that this is not ideal and that the same thing should basically be added to "Child items" panel within the item (Initiative) itself. 👀

[orla_mears]

@Tomislav Tobijas ah amazing! Just looked at those tickets and yeah it definitely fits around what I need!

Thank you, I'll make sure to add a comment to this and hopefully they'll come good for us all!

They give with one hand and take away with another hahah.  It's one of the core functions we need, otherwise it's a hefty amount of effort as not all teams like plans (but I do)

Cheers again!

[Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira]

Hi @orla_mears

I very much understand your frustration! From what I can see, it looks like this is merely a UI/UX limitation of Jira, and not related to the underlying hierarchy system.

If you are open to solutions from the Atlassian Marketplace, you'll have a number of options available that allow quick and easy management of cross-project parent/child relationships. E.g., you may want to have a look at the app that my team and I are working on: JXL for Jira.

JXL is a full-fledged spreadsheet/table view for your work items (issues) that allows viewing, inline-editing, sorting, and filtering by all your work item fields, much like you’d do in e.g. Excel, Google Sheets, Smartsheet, or Airtable. It also comes with a long list of advanced features, including support for (configurable) work item hierarchies, work item grouping by any work item field(s), sum-ups, or conditional formatting.

It also allows modeling your (cross-project, if needed) issue hierarchies via drag and drop, like e.g. so:

I understand that this is different from your previous work flow, but depending on your exact use case it might be worth a try.

Any questions just let me know,

Best,

Hannes