Removing epic links from subtasks

[Rafal Sojka]

Hi,

My jira version is: 8.5 and we face such an issue:

There is a project where we have created a story with three subtasks. The subtasks were created automatically during creation of the story (by Create transition in workflow). After linking this story with Epic (via Epic Link) subtasks automatically inherit this new Epic Link. 

The problem happens when I modify epic link in the story, then sub-tasks are not updated and are linked to previous epic. When i try to open them and change it manually I get information that ""A sub-task cannot be assigned to an epic." which is not true since the previous epic contains information about those subtasks. 

Any idea, how I can remove reference to previous Epic and replace them with new one ?

Thank you,
Rafal

[David Reaburn]

I also have this problem. I imported a set of Tasks & SubTasks via a CSV file, and left the epic link in the SubTask rows as well as Task rows.

Jira imported this though, and set the epic link at SubTask level too. This should be a bug in Jira as it doesn't normally allow this & should be picked up by the importer.

Now, whenever you try to edit one of these SubTasks from the edit screen, you get an error about the epic link & you can't save any changes.

The solution I came with: Do a Bulk Change -> Move & select the SubTasks you want to fix. Convert them to Tasks using the bulk move, edit / bulk edit them to delete the epic link, then Bulk Move them back to SubTasks. You'll have to select the parent task when you convert them back to SubTasks so best to do this one set of SubTasks at a time.

[Atticus Bikos]

Thanks for the information. Due to a design flaw in an automation rule, I have a bunch of Sub-tasks with Epic Links assigned to them which were inherited from the Parent. I tried to do a bulk change to clear the Epic Link field with no luck. 

So I will try your suggestion above. 

[KAGITHALA BABU ANVESH]

Hi @Rafal Sojka ,

I'm unable to link an sub-task to epic.

I tried for stories with epic link as below.

Suggestion

JQL > 

Key in (Sub-task keys which having epic link)

bulk edit 

remove epic link

save.

for stories the above is went well. for sub-tasks please try it once.

Thanks.

[David Reaburn]

This does not work

When you bulk edit a SubTask, Jira displays 'A subtask cannot be assigned to an epic.' next to the Epic Link field and no ability to remove it.

[Atticus Bikos]

Agreed, this does not work.

[Jack Brickey]

The question I have is how did you get sub-tasks assigned to an epic in the first place? Cloud currently has a bug whereby you can make this error condition happen if you convert a story to a subtask and choose the epic as the parent but I doubt that is the cause here. By design subtasks cannot have an epic link so if it does it is a bug condition IMO. Maybe some addon is at play here? You mention the subtask s are created automatically. I would investigate that a bit and see if the epic link is somehow being set thru some implementation flaw. 

[Atticus Bikos]

An automation rule set to inherit fields from task to sub-task inherited the Epic Link field. If Epic Link is present on the sub-task screen.