JIRA Initiative Parent link
Asked by Michael O:

Hi,

If you have a JIRA Initiative ticket with parent link to a JIRA Initiative, how can you see in the JIRA Initiative ticket which parent it belongs to? I.e. is there a parent link field in JIRA Initiative?


Answers:
author: Joseph Chung Yin
body: [@Michael O](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4676879) -

Hi Michael:

Welcome to the community. It seems you have a problem here already - an initiative has a parent link to another initiative. This situation is not allowed if you setup your issue hierarchy properly. The same issue type cannot roll up to the same issue type.

If you mean an Epic case has a parent link to Initiative, then that makes more sense. In this case, you have two options -

1) Go into your AR for Jira plan, and expose the "Parent" column to identify the the parent issue roll-up assigned value (See image below)

![2021-12-16_7-58-59.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/174295iF44105BE7640C63E/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "2021-12-16_7-58-59.png")

2) Go to your project where the issue is associated to and modify the screens configuration and add the "Parent Link" field for Epic or the higher issue types (i.e Initiative) only. NOTE - it is important not to expose the "Parent Link" field to any issue type that rolls up to Epic.

If you do have the case where an initiative is associated to another initiative via parent link, then you need to check to see if the ticket was moved from another issue type to "Initiative" by someone. The mover forgot to remove the parent link association before the move issue operation. In this case, you will need to conduct another move issue operation to convert it back to the original issue type. Afterward, remove the parent link associated to the ticket in question, then re-convert it back to initiative issue type. Before this action, expose the "Parent Link" field as stated in my #2 recommendation, so you can see the parent link field in the Issue View screen UI.

Hope this helps.

Best, Joseph Chung Yin

Jira/JSM Functional Lead, Global Infrastructure Applications Team

Viasat Inc.

comments: author: Michael O
body: Hi Joseph,

Thank you so much for your extensive response. I realized however I made a significant typo in my question, apologize for that, my bad.

What I meant to write was that if you have JIRA Initiative ticket with a parent link to JIRA Program, how can you see in the Initiative ticket which Parent program it belongs to. I.e. how do you expose the Parent Link field in the JIRA Initiative ticket?


author: Joseph Chung Yin
body: Hi Michael:

Thanks for your update. As I mentioned in my previous reply - You can adjust your project's Screens Configuration (where the initiative issue is hosted in) and add the "Parent Link" field to the Issue View screen for the Initiative Issue Type only.

If currently your Initiative Issue Type is sharing a common screen configuration with other issue types in the same project, then you will need to create a new screen configuration for just the Initiative Issue Type with the "Parent Link" field exposed.

Example - In one of our projects, we have Initiative and other issue types setup for the project. As you can see we have created a custom screens scheme just for Initiative Issue Type, so we can expose the "Parent Link" field for this type.

![2021-12-16_12-32-04.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/174343i64D71AB1A5811FCD/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "2021-12-16_12-32-04.png")

If you don't want to go this setup, then you can simply create a AR for Jira plan, and add the "Parent" column in the plan. This is assuming that you also include the project that has the "Program" issues in your plan. From the plan, you can then see the Initiative to Parent association from it.

Hope this helps.

Best, Joseph


author: Michael O
body: Thanks again Joseph, this was very helpful! I don?t seem to have the priviliges to update Screen Configurations for my project. I?ll ask my JIRA admin to help out.

Much appreciated,

Michael


Tags: advanced-roadmaps