What is the most effective way to set up initiatives in Jira Portfolio?

[Anna]

I've tried linking epics to an initiative but maintaining that manually is not optimal. 

[Jeff Gabriel]

When you say "setup" I imagine you're talking about the planning - not the configuration of initiatives?

If so, I think this is a serious limitation of Portfolio. Those parent links are only editable in the Portfolio viewer and appears maybe possible to set via REST API.

I too have really been struggling to find a good way to link epics - but it seems like you have to do your epic creation in portfolio if you want an automatic link.