parent vs parentEpic behaviour in JQL?

[Adam Bang]

In JQL searching parentEpic = WI-21 produces a list of all child work items and the epic I am searching for. The JQL parent = WI-21 only produces a list of the child items. 

I created a new work item type on the same hierarchy level as Epic and I expected the same search results, but my new work item has changed the results when using parentEpic. The parentEpic query now only results in the issue I am searching for. parentEpic = WI-21 only results in W-21.

Can I make the new work item type work the same as the parentEpic search?

My current work around is "parent = WI-21 or key=W-21" to get the same result as "parentEpic = W-21" when the work item was an Epic.

[Florian Bonniec · Accepted solution]

Hi @Adam Bang 

Is it a Team managed project ? It may be related to this https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-83175

Regards

[Adam Bang]

Hi @Florian Bonniec, thanks for answering

It's company managed.

The bug clarifies the difference between parent and parentEpic. The solution I'm looking for how to make parentEpic to work on my "Epic" like work item.

[Florian Bonniec]

Your current workaround looks fine to me. Using Parent seems to be the solution to go, with the recent change from Epic Link to Parent, it should work.

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/upcoming-changes-epic-link-replaced-with-parent/

Did you add the work item in the work hierarchy as well ?

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/configure-custom-hierarchy-levels-in-advanced-roadmaps/

Regards

[Adam Bang]

Thanks for the links, now knowing that parentEpic will be deprecated my question is no longer applicable.
I have added the work item to the hierarchy and was therefore curious as to why the behavior was different.