We do internally developed software capitalization, and our time tracking must align to the epics teams are working on (in our world, epic=project). Because of this, we require all issues to be tagged to an epic. Sub-tasks cannot be viewed in the Plan mode, and therefore cannot be tagged to the epic. In addition, when I create a sub-task, it is not inheriting the Epic link from the parent.

This causes our time reporting to create orphaned hours for sub-tasks which have no epic.

When sub-task is created, it doesn't inherit the Epic link from the parent. This creates some issues, like:

• If a board is configured to use Epics swimlanes and you have visible on this board an Epic, and under this Epic a story and a sub-task under this story, if by some reason the story is not visible on the board (due to filter conditions or status mapping configuration), the sub-task is displayed under the "Issues without Epics" instead of being displayed under the Epic linked to its parent
• This also causes time reporting to create orphaned hours for sub-tasks which have no epic.

Defining sub-tasks to inherit their parents' Epic link would resolve both problems

Please expose the sub-tasks in plan (or make it configurable), or ensure the epic link field inherits the epic attributes of it's parent!

Possible workaround

I thought of creating an Automation rule that will populate a paragraph custom field in the Sub-task with a link to the Epic that's associated to the parent of that Sub-task.

• First, I created a paragraph custom field called Epic (the name of the field is up to you):

• Then made sure it was using the Wiki Style Renderer in the field configuration

• Then I first created an Automation rule that will populate that field upon a Sub-task's creation if the parent of the Sub-task contains an Epic:
  Show Epic on Sub-task - creation.json
  • First check if the issue type is Sub-task -> then check if the parent has an Epic by looking if the smart value to get the parent's Epic is not empty -> then edit the paragraph field I created with the following smart value (it will get the parent's epic's summary and key, as well as create a URL using wiki markup):

    [{{issue.parent.epic.key}} - {{issue.parent.epic.summary}}|https://unlimitedjiraworks.atlassian.net/browse/{{issue.parent.epic.key}}]
    

    • You will need to adjust the URL to match your site's
• Result in the Sub-task:
  

I also create a rule that will perform the changes when the Sub-task's parent is edited (Epic added or removed): Show or remove Epic on Sub-task - edit.json

• The rule will look at changes of the field Parent -> Then check if it occurred on specific issue types (I selected issue types that are below Epic in my hierarchy) -> Then execute an if/else to see if the Parent field is now Empty or not
  • If Empty, clear the field Epic in the Sub-tasks
  • If not Empty, populate the field Epic in the Sub-tasks

I built those rules for a scenario where it is assumed that the parent of the Sub-task will have a parent of type Epic. With some tweaks it could be possible to make it work for others Parent/Child relationships within the hierarchy.

You might also want to use this documentation as reference for importing the Automation rules I provided: Import and export Jira automation rules.