Documentation for GreenHopper 6.1.x. Documentation for other versions of JIRA Agile is available too.
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An epic captures a large body of work. It is essentially a large user story that can be broken down into a number of smaller stories. It may take several sprints to complete an epic. 

In GreenHopper, an epic is simply an issue of type "Epic", which has a name (e.g. "My New Feature") with which other issues can be associated (linked).

Typically, once all of an epic's issues have been completed, you will want to complete the epic. However, you can complete an epic even if some of its issues are incomplete.

(info) Please note:

Completing an epic

(info) Please note:

  • You will need to have the "Edit Issue" permission in the project to which the epic belongs.

To complete an epic,

  1. Log in to JIRA.

  2. Click the Agile link's down-arrow in the top navigation bar, then select your preferred board from the resulting dropdown menu.

  3. Your board will be displayed. Click Plan.
  4. If the Epics panel is not shown at the left of the screen, select Tools > Show Epic Panel.
  5. In the Epics panel, click the drop-down and select Mark as done (see Screenshot 1 below). This will set the epic's Epic Status field (see GreenHopper JIRA Configuration) to "Done", but will not affect the epic's workflow or its Status field, and none of the epic's issues will be affected.

Screenshot 1: completing an epic

 

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Re-opening an epic

Out of the box, there is no way to re-open an epic. However, you can re-open an epic by following the steps below.

(info) Please note:

  • You will need to have the "Edit Issue" permission in the project to which the epic belongs.
  • You will need to have the "JIRA Administrator" global permission. 

To re-open an epic,

  1. Add the Epic Status field (see GreenHopper JIRA Configuration) to the View and Edit screens of your project (see custom field context).
  2. View the epic issue in JIRA
  3. Edit the epic issue and set Epic Status to either "To Do" or "In Progress".
  4. (optional) Undo step 1.

 

 



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