What "mark as done" does to an Epic and how to mark an epic as done automatically?

[Alex Yang]

I am not sure what "mark as done" does to an Epic. 

Every time when I "resolve" an epic with resolution "DONE", and then "close" it. The epic can still be seen in the left-hand panel of Backlog view. I know that I need to click the button on its top-right corner and choose "Mark as Done". 

I am confused about the design. I have resolved and closed the epic, but I still need additional step/operation to "mark as done" to make it disappear in the list of left-handle panel of the backlog. 

How can I save this operation? 

Thanks a lot. 

[Jack Brickey · Accepted solution]

For Epic issue types there are indeed two different statuses:

• issue status - the status we all know and love for all issue types
• Epic status - a unique status for Epics only

there are a number of threads that discuss the why's and wherefore's of this but basically an Epic can span multiple projects and there has historically been a need to have an independent "done" to complete a project independent of it's issue status in the project where it exists.

you might find this recent thread useful  - set-epic-status-to-done-on-issue-ark-as-done

[Alex Yang]

In fact, I can accept the design that epic has two types of status(es). 

But what made me uncomfortable is that there is the only way to mark epic status to DONE, in the Backlog -> left-hand panel -> scroll and find the epic -> click the top-right -> click "mark as done". 

In project management, it is really complicated to us to locate it and mark it as done. 

I am not sure if we can do it when I close the epic, there is another option for us to choose "mark it as done“, etc. 

I read the thread you mentioned and have not tried as importing an app into company JIRA system need a workflow and approval. 

thanks a lot. 

[laurence]

I agree with this. Worse even, if you try and do a search on 'epic status=done', it doesn't display the tickets, and when you try make the field display on a card/ticket, the value seems to be to choose (it has no value set, when wait, i thought i had just marked this as done in the Board view).

it seems to be related only to the 'epics report', which really doesn't tell you much, and i personally find useful.

to sum up:

1) having 2 status is addressing some niche edge business case, it would be much better to have a single status

2) the epic status feature fundamentally doesn't work, cannot be retrieved nor amended

[Deleted user]

Having another way to mark as done while editing the actual epic would eliminate the process of having to get out of the epic, go to the backlog and bring up the epic board to mark as done. I would love to know of a more efficient process.

[Another agile delivery person]

As above, you need to add the custom field "epic status" then when you edit the epic you will have a drop down box that will allow you to change the epic status, which is different from the issue status (even though the issue is an epic), All seems a bit mad to me, but there you go.

[David Marcial]

I'm thinking that if the Epic Status field is added that an automation could be created to change that to Done when the regular Status is changed to Done. Then you wouldn't have to have it actually show up in the issue. Going to test out this afternoon.

[David Marcial]

Below is the automation I use and it works great. Only issue is if someone accidentally marks an Epic Done then you have to go in and change the Epic Status back to In Progress. (I believe you need an Admin to enable the Epic Status field as well). 

[meetinghouse]

I have a related question - I have Closed a bunch of Epics and now I want to Mark them as Done to get them off the Epic panel, but I'm getting an error that "This issue cannot be edited because of its workflow status." Do I have to put them back into a workflow status that is other than Closed before I can mark them as Done. Do I then have to go find them to set them back to closed? 

[Andres Rodriguez]

This is the issue that brought me to this thread and I don't know how to address it

[meetinghouse]

I 'think' I figured this out. I'll look tomorrow when I'm on my work laptop and see if I can remember what I did. I 'think' that what I had to do was reopen them, mark them as done in the Epic panel, and then go search for them using the basic search of 

Project = your project
Issue Type = Epic

Status = I didn't enter anything for status.

Then I selected the ones I wanted to Close (again) from the results. Will try to replicate tomorrow though and respond tomorrow night. 

[Andres Rodriguez]

This worked! Thank you! (also this is a really dumb issue to have)