Agile Hive introduces the new issue types "Solution Train Epic", "ART Epic" and "Team Epic". These come preconfigured with the Agile Hive Project Templates. You do not need to use our project templates, but in case you want to use the Epic functionality, you will have to use these issue types. Assign them to your projects accordingly.

This is due to the app code checking for these issue types when you try to link issues within the same project to each other with the Agile Hive Link (Child Of, Parent Of). That's also why you should not use the standard Jira Epic

With version 4.1.0 Agile Hive offers support for Epics on all levels. These Epics can be used to break down larger initiatives that only concern a single Team/ART/Solution Train and does not have to be handled on the Portfolio level.

Agile Hive Epics are not Jira Epics

Agile Hive introduces three new issue types: Team Epic, ART Epic and Solution Train Epic. Agile Hive Epics can be linked with the Agile Hive Link to issues within the same project the Epic is in. For example, you can now

• Link Story, Bug etc. to a Team Epic
• Features, Enablers, etc. to ART Epics
• Capabilities to Solution Train Epics

Not allowed are 

• Stories etc. can not be linked to ART Epics
• Team Epics can not link to Features, ART Epics etc. (i.e. Epics can't have parents themselves)
• in general, Epics can not link to issues from different projects

There are exceptions to this rule:

• Portfolio Epics can still link to Capabilities, Enablers from Solution Train Projects
• Portfolio Epics can still link to Features, Enablers from ART Projects 

Use Team Epics as you would use Features on the Agile Hive Breakout Board view

On the Breakout Board view, you can drag and drop Team Epics on the Board like you would do it with a Feature from the corresponding ART project. This Team Epic will then only be usable for the (in this case) BHM-Team. You can then use the Agile Hive Link to connect several child issues to this Epic.

For example, BHM-380 is "Child Of" the Epic BHM-379. Previously, this could only been done with a Feature from the ART project. 

Team Epics will not appear on the ART Planning Board tough. As these are Team-specific, we chose to not include them on the automated ART Planning Board.

Epics will also appear on the Reports like parents from projects from higher levels

On the Team Report, the Stories linked to an Epic will be grouped in the Sprints together in the Team Epic.

Also, on higher level reports, Epics will be displayed like the parent issues from projects above. Epics themselves will not appear grouped by their parent issue, as Epics can't have parents themselves.

Use on the Roadmap

Epics can also be used on the Roadmaps like other issue types. Although, there is no automatic visualization, these could, for example be used to group child issues.

In case you already have very Team-specific Features in place in your ART and you want to convert them to actual Team Epics, here's a How-To for you to follow or adapt.

There are four issues in this example ART project: Three Team-specific features which have only issues from one team and a Feature with links to every team. From the child links, each Team-specific issue does have the Teams Involved field set. 

In case, your Features have links to Capabilities or Portfolio Epics, please review these before moving:

• Does the issue really need representation on the ART, Solution Train or Portfolio project? 
• Does it have dependencies to other children of its parent?

If any of these are true, the issue should probably remain a Feature. Otherwise you should remove the links to the parent issue. The Move-operation would keep this link and - as Epics can't have parent issues when linking is done via the "Link" dialog - would thus create an invalid Agile Hive link. This could affect the report views.

We can use the Issue Search in Jira to pick out only those issues where the Teams Involved field has only a specific Team set:

Because the Teams Involved field is a list, we have to ask for issues containing a specific project (in this case TEAM1) and not containing any other projects (TEAM2 and TEAM3).

After having identified all issues for TEAM1, we can use the Bulk Change from the Tools menu.

When asked, what to do with the selected issues, choose the "Move" operation. Here we can move issues to another project and map them to other issue types. 

Choose the correct Team project and the "Team Epic" issue type. After that, you will have to map the status of the issue as well as custom fields that might differ.

Review your changes and confirm them.

The new issues should look like these in the end, containing the links as well as PIs etc.