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HelpPut work under an epic

Put work under an epic

Lesson 4 of 5

Sumline adds up what sits under a work item: subtasks under a story, stories under an epic. Work with no parent is not counted anywhere, so each story needs an epic and each piece of a story a place under it.

Put a story under an epic

  1. Open the story. Click its key anywhere in Jira, or go to https://<your-site>.atlassian.net/browse/WEB-12, with your own site and key.

  2. Find Parent in the Details column. It shows the epic the story is in.

    The Details column of WEB-12 with its Parent field at the foot: WEB-1 One-page checkout.
    The Details column of WEB-12 with its Parent field: WEB-1 One-page checkout

  3. Click the Parent field. Jira lists epics.

  4. Type the first letters of the epic’s name, then click the epic. Tick Show done work items to find an epic that is done.

The story now counts towards that epic.

Put a subtask under a story

  1. Open the story.

  2. Under Subtasks, click Add subtask. When the story has subtasks already, click the + at the right of the section.

  3. Type the subtask’s summary and press Enter.

    The Subtasks section of WEB-12: a progress bar and two subtasks, WEB-13 Vault card tokens and WEB-14 Card art and labels.
    The Subtasks section of WEB-12: two subtasks, WEB-13 and WEB-14

A subtask has its own story points, estimates and logged time, and Sumline adds them to the story.

What Sumline shows

Open the epic and open the Sumline panel: the story points, estimates and time of every story and subtask under it, added up.

The Sumline panel on an epic: “12 child work items across 2 levels”, how long ago it was calculated (“Updated 4 min ago”) and Recalculate, totals per field, progress by estimate and by work item count, a “Check the estimates” box naming the two work items with no estimate and the one estimated in hours only, and a child table whose Warnings column marks one child “No estimate” and another “1 unestimated”, then Open in Sumline.
The Sumline panel on the epic WEB-1: the totals, then each child’s own figures

If you don’t see it

  • No Parent field. It is not on the work item’s screen. A Jira admin adds it at https://<your-site>.atlassian.net/jira/settings/issues/screens, or a team-managed space’s admin adds it under Space settings › Work types.
  • No Add subtask. Jira has three levels: epic, story and subtask. A subtask cannot have subtasks of its own, and an epic’s children are stories, not subtasks.

What you have now

Work that hangs together from subtask to epic. Next, find where Sumline shows it: Find Sumline in Jira.