Issue Summary

After the unified Software Timeline rollout to Jira Software spaces, hierarchy and epic grouping behaviour has changed unexpectedly when a filter is active. The hierarchy now displays in a flyout modal instead of inline in the table. Users who relied on seeing parent/child relationships inline while filtering are experiencing this as a significant workflow regression.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Navigate to a Jira Software project → Timeline view
2. Ensure the project has epics with child issues (stories/tasks)
3. Apply any filter (e.g., filter by assignee or label)
4. Observe the hierarchy display

Expected Results

Hierarchy (parent/child relationships) remains visible inline in the table while filtering, as in the previous Timeline experience.

Actual Results

When a filter is active, hierarchy relationships are removed from the inline table and shown only via a flyout modal. Users must click into a separate modal to see an item's parent or children — disrupting planning workflows where hierarchy context is needed alongside filtered results.

Workaround

There is no workaround to display hierarchy when filter is active.

Remove the active filter to restore inline hierarchy. For CMP projects, check whether a board-level filter is activating the new experience (even without an explicit view-level filter applied).

🟩 6 Jul 2026 — Update on the new Timeline experience: what's coming

Thank you to everyone who has shared feedback. I want to share what we're doing about it, but first, some context on why this change happened at all.

The new timeline was rebuilt from the ground up to unlock something teams have long asked for: full visibility of your work hierarchy, including subtasks.

For the first time, you can see your complete work breakdown — Epics, Stories, Tasks, and Subtasks — all in one place on the timeline. That required a fundamental architectural change, and we know that in making room for that, we disrupted some existing workflows in ways we didn't get right. We're actively fixing it in coming 2 weeks.

Our first step is to give you back control over what you see, reducing noise while keeping the full hierarchy available to those who want it.

1. Hide work items without Epic (standalone items) toggle: On by default, so the timeline opens clean, showing only work items that belong to an Epic, just like before. Turn it off whenever you want full visibility.
2. Hierarchy level control: Choose the top level of hierarchy shown on your timeline. Defaults to Epic (or equivalent), matching the old Software Timeline experience. This control only appears when your space has levels above Epic, so it won't add noise for teams that don't need it.

On filtering and hierarchy — here's what's coming and when:

• Board-level filter (company-managed timeline): Hierarchy is coming back. When your board-level filter is active, the timeline will respect your hierarchy settings and display work in the correct structure. This is actively being worked on.
• View-level filter: When a view-level filter is active, the timeline will continue to show a flat list with the flyout for hierarchy context for now. Full inline hierarchy while a view filter is applied is significantly more complex — we're committed to it, but it will take longer.

Both new controls will be highlighted via an in-product spotlight when you first land on the new timeline, so you won't need to go hunting for them.

We'll share more as these ship. In the meantime, if your planning is being impacted right now — grab some time with me: https://calendar.app.google/rkCse8eDx1QyTNCL8
You can also follow and vote on the JAC ticket here: JRACLOUD-98720