Epic Name vs Epic Link
Platform Notice: Cloud, Server, and Data Center - This article applies equally to all platforms.
Support for Server* products ended on February 15th 2024. If you are running a Server product, you can visit the Atlassian Server end of support announcement to review your migration options.
*Except Fisheye and Crucible
The purpose of this article is to clarify the function of the Jira custom fields, Epic Name and Epic Link.
The Epic Link custom field is a relational link to determine an issue's parent epic, and is different from the issue linking functionality. It is available to all issue types, except for the sub-task type, since such type of issues can't be assigned to an epic.
When creating a new Epic, the Epic Name custom field is a short name field used to identify the Epic. By default it is available only to Epic Issue Type. It is intended to be used to label any issues that belong to the Epic.
Starting in Jira Agile 6.2.2 or in any version of Jira, if you add the Epic Link field as a column in your JIRA Issue Navigator , it will display the actual name of the epic ( Epic Name) rather than the issue key of the epic.
One way to add an issue to an epic is to click on the Edit button from the Issue View screen, and then edit the Epic Link field as shown in the screenshot below:
After the issue is added to an epic, the Epic Link will be displayed in the Epic Link field in the issue view screen as shown in the screenshot below:
It is important to note that the Epic Link field needs to be included in the screen associated to both the Edit Issue and View Issue action, for this field to be viewed and editable.
In Conclusion:
- Epic Name is shown only for issues with issue type Epic
- Epic Name is not shown on other issue type
- Issues with regular issue type (other than the Epic and Sub-task types) will only have the Epic Link shown
For further details please see Configuring projects and Working with epics.