Team managed business project issue links

[Erin Milne]

I am attempting to add linked issues to my top level issue to display lineage of work to different teams in our new business project jira board.  The only issues that can be linked are sub-tasks.  Can this be changed to link to a customized issue? 

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @Erin Milne 

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

The native issue type hierarchy in Jira is:

Epic 
|-- standard level issue types (i.e. Task, Bug, Story)
    |-- subtask level issue types

There are two ways to "link" issues. You can use the "Link Issue" button to create a generic link between any two issues, regardless of the issue types. However Jira does not recognize any special parent/child (lineage) relationship between generically linked issues.

The other way to "link" issues is to use the Child Issue option. This will add an issue as a "child" of the current issue, creating a parent/child relationship. These sorts of links are limited to following the established Issue Type Hierarchy of the Jira instance. So, if you are currently in an Epic, you can add a child issue from the "standard level issue types" available in your project. If you are in a "standard level issue type", then you can add a subtask level issue type as a child.

In a Team Managed project you can see the issue types and levels from Project Settings > Issue Types.

You can see the +Add issue type button at the bottom of the list. That allows you to add more issue types to your project. However in TM projects you can only add to the "standard issue type level". You can't add to the Epic or "subtask issue type" levels. And you cannot change the issue type hierarchy.

I hope that helps you understand what you are experiencing.

If not feel free to ask additional questions. And consider adding screen images to help illustrate your actions and questions surrounding those actions.

[Erin Milne]

Thank you for your answer, and it does help clarify the hierarchy of the issues.