What exactly does "Mark As Done" do to an Epic?

[chadsmom]

I understand this removes the epic from your Epics menu on your backlog, but what happens if there are still open stories assigned to it?  Can you still assign stories to that Epic if you want to?  

The way our project is set up is that even though the functionality of an Epic has been completed, there are still bugs logged to that Epic.  Can you still assign new bugs to an Epic when it's "done"?

[Kevin Bui · Accepted solution]

Hi @chadsmom - When you select Mark as Done for an epic, it doesn't affect the issues still assigned to it (ie: they will remain in their status, and won't be set to Done).

You can still assign stories to that epic if you want to; you won't be able to do it via the Epic panel anymore, but you can go into an individual issue and assign it to the epic there.

[chadsmom]

Thanks for the reply @Kevin Bui!  I tried to assign a story to my "Done" epic by typing in the Epic name in the individual issue but it's not pulling up my "Done" epics anymore.  Do you need to know the exact Epic number to do that moving forward?

[Kevin Bui]

Hi @chadsmom - You should still be able to assign an issue to your "Done" epic by opening the issue, selecting the Epic Link field, and searching for the epic (both name and issue key should work).

Are you not able to search for your epic using its name?

[chadsmom]

The name of my "Done" epic is not showing up.  Is there anything else that matters for this?  Does the Epic need to be in a certain state in order to show up when searching for it?

[Melanie C]

Perhaps Atlassian could consider renaming the Epic panel "Mark as Done" as "Exclude from all backlog Epic panels"

I understand that currently "Mark as done" checkbox also sets EpicStatus as done, but since I have never seen EpicStatus actually in use in a feature, maybe this is not necessary. (EpicStatus never changes to In Progress from any workflow action, only manually setting it will do anything and to no apparent purpose.

[Eric Forget]

Oh my god that Jira is a mess ..... :(

[Arturo Nevarez]

Found  by using rest api that when you select Mark epic as done, it changes  "customfield_10001" value from "To Do" to "Done". This seems completely independent from the workflow status. I am not sure if the customfield number will always be the same across companies using Jira.

Before:

"customfield_10001": {
"self": "https://www.jira.XXX.com/rest/api/2/customFieldOption/10000",
"value": "To Do",
"id": "10000",
"disabled": false
},

After:

"self": "https://www.jira.XXX.com/rest/api/2/customFieldOption/10002",
"value": "Done",
"id": "10002",
"disabled": false
},

[Lolly Roy]

Atlassian team - I was wondering what use cases led to the suggestion of needing to assign new items to parent types like Epics that we actually consider to be done/complete? Why would we want to do this? Surely if something is done its done?

[Carlos Palminha]

This is very confusing and it doesn't seem to be documented.

What happens in JIRA (is there a field that changes?) when we use the EPIC "Mark as Done"?

When we look at two EPICS, "one marked as done in the EPIC panel" and another "sent do "Done" by workflow", it doesn't seem to have a difference!

Can someone kinldy explain and document what is the difference and what happens in JIRA?

[Kevin Bui]

Hi @Carlos Palminha - I can confirm that when you select "Mark as Done" in the epic panel, it will only set the Epic status field to "Done". It won't impact the normal Status field.

The normal Status field will change only if you set it as Done via the workflow. This is documented here.

Hope that helps!

[Thomas Nilefalk]

There seems to be some inconsistency here, presumably since the integration of GreenHopper.

Thanks, @Kevin Bui , for the explanation. The Done as you can do in the Epics view of the Backlog is not the same as the Done in the workflow.

I am assuming the "Mark as Done" uses some special attribute in the Epic related to exactly this "feature". However that creates a problem since once you have closed the Epic using the workflow, you can no longer "Mark as Done" in the Backlog view as that would modify the Epic.

Or is that a problem only in our setup?

If it's not, then I would argue that it would be better to just not include Epics that are Done (workflow) in the Epic view of the Backlog, they are seldom of any use there and just clutter up the list.