Portfolio Themes not propigating for new issues

[PhillipS]

Hello,

    I am trying to use themes in my portfolio project.  Since there is not a way to filter on specific initiatives or epics, I am using themes to group the initiatives/epics/stories that logically fit together into a business objective.  This allows me to filter on each theme (business objective) to only see a view of that objective.

    When I mark an initiative with a theme, it automatically assigns all epics and all stories underneath that initiative to the theme (which is what I want).  The problem is when a new story is entered by the Product Owner, and it's linked to an epic, which is already linked to the initiative which was marked with the theme, the story doesn't automatically get added to the theme, which means I have to keep resetting the theme at the initiative level to make sure new stories (and Epics) attached to that initiative are added to the theme.

    Ultimately I'm just looking for a way to filter my portfolio by initiatives.  Am I going at it the right way with Themes, or is there some other way I should be approching this problem?

[Allard van Helbergen]

Hi @PhillipS,

It sounds like there would be a simpler way to achieve what you're asking for. What is it that makes you unable to filter on specific epics or initiatives?

Does the hierarchy switcher and text field not work for you? Did you know you can fill an issue key into the text filter to target only that issue?

Cheers
Allard

[PhillipS]

Hell Allard,

    Thank you for your reply.  Although I had not tried the text field before, It's not working to get what I need.  When selecting "story" hierarch, and then doing a search on the text field for the initiative, I do not also get all stories that fall under that initiative.  What I'm really looking to do is look at the hierarchy of "Story" level issues, but only select one's that fall under a specific Initiative (or pontentially a couple, but just 1 for now).  By selecting story, I get the Schedule view that I want to vizualize, and by filtering further on an initiative, I get to inspect what work/ and when certain teams are doing the work for a specific program in the portfolio.

    Any other suggestions?  Or have I not followed your initial suggestion correctly?

Thanks

~Phil

[Allard van Helbergen]

Hi @PhillipS,

So there's some things we need to clear up, because I feel we're not using the same terminology. 

Stories, Epics and Initiatives reflect the hierarchy of an issue, bunching features that you want track into ever-larger chunks. 
https://confluence.atlassian.com/jiraportfoliocloud/configuring-initiatives-and-other-hierarchy-levels-828785179.html

What you refer to as an initative, sounds like what is defined as a theme, a strategic goal that multiple pieces of work can contribute to. 
https://confluence.atlassian.com/jiraportfoliocloud/using-the-themes-report-828785348.html

To filter for a story with a particular theme you would

• Ensure that you have themes created (in the themes report) and that themes have been assigned to stories (in the scope view). 
• select the story hierarchy in the filter bar (the way you describe)
• add the theme filter from under the 'more'-filters button
• Select the themeyou want to filter on in the themes filter 
• The page should refresh by itself. 

Let me know if that worked for you.

Cheers,
Allard

[PhillipS]

Hello Allard,

    This is what I'm doing today, execpt, instead of setting each individual story to a theme, because I am able to group my themes by 1 or many initiatives at my org, I am setting the theme on the initiative, which sets the theme to all lower level Epics and stories in that initative. 

    This gives me the filtering ability I am looking for, but, the problem is that when new issues are created that eventually roll up into that initiative that is set to a theme, even though I set the iniative to the theme originally, it doesn't carry over to the new issues automatically, I have to reset the initative to the theme, which then sets all new stories under epics under that initative to the theme.

Eventually my manual workflow every morning is the following:

• Come in and load up my portfolio to see all initatives.
• Reset all initiatives to their currently selected theme
• new stories that were created yesterday under each initiative are now set correctly to the appropriate theme for filtering
• commit changes
• now i can sort based off of theme and make sure it's showing everything intended in the theme.

Like everything else in Portfolio, I was hoping that there was a way to have the theme "auto-set" based on it's parent (epic or initiative) when it is created and pulled in automatically, but it doesn't seem this is possible.

Is it possible, or is there another way to sort that I'm not exploring such that i can cut out this manual process every morning?

[Allard van Helbergen]

Hey @PhillipS,

Thanks for your extensive reply. That cleared up a few things for me. You are doing everything in the correct manner. 

Which is to say, sorry but no, there is currently no way to automatically add a theme to newly created issues. We don't do this as themes are often across many issues contained in initiatives. So any single initiative the would contribute to multiple themes. 

You can file a feature request for this, if you would like. 

Sorry I couldn't be of more help.

Cheers,
Allard

[PhillipS]

Hi Allard,

    While searching the feature request project you pointed me to I found this request:

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JPOSERVER-1608?jql=text%20~%20%22portfolio%20themes%22

This is exactly what I'm looking for.  I've watched and voted up the issue.