Best Practice Timeline & Epic management for General Tasks

[Nick Bishop]

Interested to hear any advice on how companies manage more administrative/general tasks and stories in the Timeline View of Jira. While 80% of our tasks and stories can be usually assigned to Epics, there's always items that don't really belong, usually the more general/broad items.

Do people group these into a kind of "general" Epic per Sprint or leave them outside of an Epic completely (and manage only on Boards), or are there are any guidance on this topic anyone can share?

[TC Wang]

Hi @Nick Bishop 

I usually leave admin/general tasks outside of Epics. There're several ways I've tried to manage those tasks: 

1) Create a new issue type (different from types such as stories, bugs, and tasks) for admin/general tasks so they can be easily distinguished in the timeline view.

2) Or if admin/general tasks have been created in given types (e.g. stories or tasks), add Labels to those tickets so they can be filtered from the view.

Hope the above helps!

[Nick Bishop]

Thanks @TC Wang appreciate the thoughts. We likewise have done (1) with an Admin issue type, but if it's not added to an Epic, it doesn't seem to show up in the Timeline view?

[TC Wang]

Hey @Nick Bishop thanks for your reply! 

I'm not 100% sure about your project/timeline settings (perhaps you can check the filter applied?), but I can create different issue types on the timeline like this. 

Or you can try the advanced roadmap that gives you more flexibility in creating timelines. For more details, you can refer to this community post/reply. 

Let me know if any other questions!