Epic names?

[Steven Battisti]

New to JIRA. 

Can anyone explain why epics have both a Name and a Summary? I find myself always making them identical. 

Edit: Never mind, I found this: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Software-questions/Epic-Names-vs-Summary/qaq-p/24899/jump-to/first-unread-message

Thanks!

[Tarun Sapra · Accepted solution]

Epic name is what you see in the "Epic Panel" on a scrum backlog and also Epic name is used as the "Epic link" in the linked story.  Whereas Summary is just the normal JIRA field. 

[Steven Battisti]

Thanks. I'm just still not sure why you would want those things to be different....

[Mari Car]

Hi,

I know the difference but I always give for both the same name. Can I remove from the screen the Epic Summary? When I clone an Epic I find really annoying to change the two fields. I forget to change the summary. 

Did you try to remove it? 

Thank you and beste regards. 

Mari

[Trejkaz]

What is the point of having two fields? I've seen two cases so far:

1. The names exactly match. In this case, having the separate field is redundant.
2. The names don't match, because someone renamed the ticket and didn't know the "Epic Name" field existed. In this case, having the separate field adds confusion when you're trying to autocomplete an Epic Link on another ticket.

Is there a valid use case for having two different names for the same ticket, where it also doesn't cause confusion?

[rob.green]

The confusion is caused by the "epic name" being used in the epic list and other places, but when you open the epic, it's the summary that's in big bold text.

The summary is used as the title, which is counterintuitive, and the name is given reduced prominence with muted text and lower in the page so you have to go looking for a reference to the thing you thought you just navigated to.

I find it really confusing and very annoying that the prominence is swapped depending on the context. It would be far better if the field used for the title was the same as is used elsewhere.

It's a seriously flawed design decision that leads to a dysfunctional UI (IMHO of course).

I use the "summary" as a title and give it the same value as the epic name to avoid confusion. The description contains the details. I also make sure the names follow a suitable hierarchy that follows a logical naming order, they are never "as an X I want to ... so that ...", that goes as the first line of the description.

[Přemysl Václavík]

Where can I set that the title of an Epic issue will be Epic Name instead of the Epic Summary ?

[Mark Winston]

So it seems that the reasoning behind this is so you can have a shorthand name in the epic panel and epic link, which has logic to it.  However, life is all about tradeoffs and after being the company Jira guru for 6 years and training new teams to use it, this benefit doesn't outweigh the confusion that it creates.  There should just be one field called "summary," which is also used for epic panels and epic fields.  In other words, get rid of the epic name field.  If that causes issues in the underlying Jira architecture, those issues should be addressed in favor of reducing user complexity and confusion.  

[JR]

Agreed, this just causes needless confusion.  I set both the same.

[dtlhlbs]

The font size of the epic label is the same as an issue's summary on the board and backlog views. It's redundant and a pain to update if you find yourself updating the summary when looking at the epic, then needing to go to the backlog > expand epics panel > expand epic > edit name and copy-paste the name to update. A waste of time. I too just name them the same as the summary and longer names have never been a problem.

[Vitor Seabra]

It looks like a legacy thing that makes any sense nowadays and Jira doesn't know how to solve it.

Same as 'Mark as Done' button at Epics grid.

[Alex R_]

I found this idiosyncratic behavior terribly annoying myself. For the benefit of other admins, here is the workaround I devised for myself. This should be added to your announcement banner. It hides the summary field whenever the Epic Name field exists and sets the value of the summary field to whatever you type in the Epic Name field.

function configureEpicNameInput(form) {
    if (form.length === 0) { return; }

    var epicNameInput = form.find("input#customfield_10104");
    var summaryInput = form.find("input#summary");

    epicNameInput.on("input", function() {
        // Copy the value from epicNameInput to summaryInput
        summaryInput.val(epicNameInput.val());
    });

    if (epicNameInput.length > 0) {
        summaryInput.closest("div.field-group").css('display', 'none');
    }
}

// https://developer.atlassian.com/server/jira/platform/extending-inline-edit-for-jira-plugins/
AJS.$(function() {
    JIRA.bind(JIRA.Events.NEW_CONTENT_ADDED, function(e, context, reason) {
        var $context = AJS.$(context);
        if (reason == JIRA.CONTENT_ADDED_REASON.dialogReady) {
            configureEpicNameInput($context.find("form#dialog-form.aui"));
        }
    });
});

// for static issue creation form (https:///secure/CreateIssue.jspa)
AJS.$(document).ready(function(){
    configureEpicNameInput(AJS.$("form#issue-create.aui"));
});

Please note this does not yet address keeping the two fields in sync when the summary field is changed from the standard view issue page.