Sprint boards: show tasks in swimlanes grouped by epics, and include epics not part of project

[Jannick B]

We want to be able to show all our tasks which are part of the sprint in our sprint board.

However if we have tasks that are part of epics owned outside the project then those tasks are not shown. That means effectively we can't use the swimlane grouped by epics as it will hide half of our tasks.

Is there a work around to solve this issue?

[John Funk · Accepted solution]

Hi Jannick - Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

If you modify the filter used by the board to include those other projects, they should then show up on your board. 

[Matt Parks]

If you have Scriptrunner, you can dynamically pull in all of the necessary epics, regardless of the project that those epics are in, using the epicsOf() issuefunction.

For example, let's say that your board is pulling in every story from Project ABC, so the query looks something like this:   project = ABC and issuetype = story

If you also add the following OR clause, it will pull in all of the epics that contain any ABC stories

OR issuefunction in epicsOf("project = ABC and issuetype = story")

[Jannick B]

Thanks for the replies :), unfortunately neither of these are viable solutions.

@John Funk that is not a viable solution as it also means the backlog no longer only contain my board's items.

@Matt Parks I don't want to pull in epics, because that would also polute my board with epics that doesn't belong to us, which would also mess with our roadmap.

The only thing we own are the stories under those epics and they are part of our sprint, and having stories shown by epic is by far the most effective way of viewing current ungoing work.

I simply want to have stories shown that belong to our sprint in our sprint board, even if those epics are happening outside the team. I would even be okay if it just said no epic on them.

[Matt Parks]

If you're going to use epics as swimlanes, the stories will only show up if their epic is also being pulled into the board. That's just how Jira works and there's no way around that.

If the stories don't have a value in the Epic Link field, they will all show up in a single swimlane called 'Issues without epics', which will be at the bottom of board.

[Jannick B]

@Matt Parks my mistake I just tested it out and it seems like it doesn't mess with our roadmap, so your solution is actually the best of both worlds :D