Links & subtasks
Parent and child issues, epics, the link types that relate issues, blocking and scheduling dependencies, duplicates, and how status progress rolls up.
The issue hierarchy
Work can be organised in levels:
- Initiative (workspace level) groups epics and projects into one goal — see Roadmap & initiatives.
- Epic collects the stories and tasks that deliver a larger piece of work.
- Story, Task, Bug are the normal working issues; their Parent may be an epic.
- Sub-task splits one issue into steps. A sub-task always belongs to a parent in the same project and cannot have sub-tasks of its own.
Adding sub-tasks
On the parent, press Create sub-task (or the + in the Sub-tasks section), enter a summary and save. Each child shows its status and assignee, and a progress bar sums the children. Click a child to open it. To attach an existing issue instead, open it, choose Set parent and enter the parent issue key. To detach it, clear the parent.
Whether closing a parent affects its children is up to your workflow; an automation rule can add such behaviour.
Epics and parents
Set the Parent field of a story, task or bug to its epic. The epic then shows all its issues, a progress bar and the totals in issues, hours or story points (switchable in the epic report). Boards can group by epic and the roadmap draws epics as bars.
Linking issues
Links say how two issues relate, in any project you can see. Press Link issue, pick the link type, find the other issue and save. The link appears on both issues, worded from each side.
| Link type | On one issue | On the other |
|---|---|---|
| Relates | relates to | relates to |
| Blocks | blocks | is blocked by |
| Duplicate | duplicates | is duplicated by |
| Implements | implements | is implemented by |
| Cloners | clones | is cloned by |
| Starts before | starts before | starts after |
| Finishes before | finishes before | finishes after |
Rules: an issue cannot link to itself; the same link cannot exist twice; you need the Link issues permission in both projects. An administrator can add custom link types under Administration → Issue link types.
Dependencies and scheduling
Starts before and Finishes before are scheduling links. The issue on the “before” side is the predecessor.
- Only one dependency may exist between two issues, and cycles (including indirect ones) are rejected.
- If the dates contradict the link — a predecessor that must finish first but is due after the successor starts — the link shows a Dates conflict badge. Nothing is blocked; it is a warning.
- On the roadmap dependencies are drawn as arrows (dashed for starts-before, red for a conflict) and conflicts are listed above the chart.
Blocking and blocked work
A Blocks link puts a note on the blocked issue. Find all of them with JQL, for example key in blockedBy("ABC-1") AND status != Done or key in blocking("ABC-1"). Flag an issue with f to mark an impediment that is not a link to another issue.
Duplicates
Mark a copy with duplicates and resolve it with the resolution Duplicate. In intake, a submission can be declared a duplicate of an existing issue directly.
How progress is counted
Every status belongs to a group: Backlog, To do, In progress, Done or Cancelled. Progress bars (epics, sub-tasks, initiatives, dashboards, burndown, velocity) count Done against everything except Cancelled — dropping work does not make it look unfinished. A cancelled status closes the issue and asks for a resolution.
Finding related work
JQL has functions for relationships: linkedIssues("ABC-1"), linkedIssues("ABC-1", "blocks"), blockedBy(), blocking(), subtasksOf() and issuesWithoutParent(). See the JQL reference.