How a Jira epic template can speed up recurring work
- Issue Template
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- 7 min
If you use Jira for project management, you’re going to be creating epics. If you manage recurring work in Jira, you’re going to be creating the same epics, with the same tasks and subtasks, over and over again.
Avoiding doing the same work over and over is why people use templates. Let’s use employee onboarding as an example. Hiring a new person will typically involve the exact same tasks every time, such as finalizing paperwork, creating new user accounts, ordering equipment, and setting up introduction meetings and training. A Jira epic template would save the project manager from having to manually create fresh Jira issues for all these tasks every time a new person joined.
Life’s too short for bad coffee, matching socks… and repeatedly creating Jira issues from scratch for the same tasks.
So let’s not. Let’s use a Jira epic template instead. In this article we’ll look at options for creating epic templates in Jira, along with a handful of examples.
What is an epic in Jira and when should you use it?
An epic is a Jira issue type used for a big task or body of work that has to be achieved through completing smaller tasks. Examples include an event, a website, a new software release, or the aforementioned onboarding of a new hire.
An epic is used to create a hierarchy of work. Under the epic you have tasks or stories, and under those you have subtasks. The epic sits at the top of your work hierarchy and is the overarching task or goal. An epic could also be understood as a folder containing a bunch of tasks on the same subject.
It should be noted that Jira epics sometimes encompass multiple teams working in multiple projects and as such they can be tracked across multiple agile boards in Jira. For example, an onboarding epic would likely involve tasks for the HR team, the IT team, the finance team, and senior management, all working in their own projects and on their own boards.
Benefits of having templates for your Jira epics
Jira epic templates are a way of automating the creation of complete epic hierarchies. In a few clicks, you can generate a whole load of ready-made tickets with predefined fields instead of manually creating each one. All you have to do is customize a few bits and pieces, like the name of the event being organized or the employee being onboarded. Otherwise, the rest of the fields are pre-populated so that you don’t have to fill them out with the same information each time.
The main benefit of creating a Jira epic based on a template is that you save a bunch of time not having to start from scratch. You also reduce the chance for error because templates stop you from missing anything, like forgetting to fill out a field or add a subtask. It’s all there in the template.
Jira epic templates also help with project management standardization, by making sure large bodies of work are delivered consistently.
How to create a Jira epic template out of the box
Unfortunately Jira doesn’t offer any functionality for making an epic template. Jira automation provides a workaround, enabling admins to configure automation rules that trigger the creation of child issues under an epic.
However, these aren’t templates and there are limitations, such as the limits on what variables you can use to customize the tickets. There’s also the fact that Jira automation rules are hard to configure and not for the faint of heart. Plus, only admins can create automation rules, but it’s not just admins who are doing project management in Jira and need to create epic templates.
Jira automation is an acceptable alternative if you have a very small team and only one or two use cases, but not if you have a bigger need for Jira epic templates and lots of users hankering to work with them.
How to create a Jira epic template using Templating.app
Since native Jira doesn’t offer any viable options for normal users to create epic templates, it’s time to look at adding the functionality by way of an Atlassian Marketplace app like Templating.app.
Templating.app allows users without admin rights to build reusable templates for individual tickets, sets of subtasks, and complete issue hierarchies. You can build a Jira epic template with predefined tasks and subtasks and add default field values to all the tickets in the template, including the summary, description, assignee, priority, and labels.
Once your template is built, all a user has to do is go into the app, select the template, customize it for their particular epic, and hit “Create”. Now, with hardly manual input, you have a complete set of tasks ready to be worked on.
You can even cut these steps and automate the epic creation even further using Jira automation rules. You can create a rule that automatically applies a chosen epic template to a project as soon as that project is created.
Some Jira epic template examples
Let’s take a look at three Jira epic template examples that could match the sort of thing you’re looking for if you work in project management in these areas.
Jira epic template for employee onboarding
If you want to create a Jira epic template for onboarding a new hire, it could look something like this:
Jira epic template for event organizing
If you want to create a Jira epic template for organizing a company event, it might look something like this.
Jira epic template for financial reporting
If you want to create a Jira epic template for preparing a financial report every quarter, it might look something like this.
To summarize (TL;DR)
Jira epics are used to create a hierarchy of work, with the epic at the top representing the overarching task or goal. Under the epic you have tasks, under those tasks you have subtasks.
You might create an epic to plan a company event, build a website, release a software feature, or onboard a new employee.
If you work in project management and you find yourself creating and managing the same epics over and over, you’d save a ton of time with a Jira epic template.
Jira epic templates automate the creation of epics and their child issues.
In native Jira, you cannot create epic templates. Jira automation provides a workaround but it invariably goes wrong and only Jira admins are allowed to create automation rules.
You can add Jira epic template functionality to your instance with an app like Templating.app.
Templating.app lets users without admin rights create templates for complete issue hierarchies, from epic to subtask.
If you want to work faster in Jira by automating the creation of epics with epic templates, book a personal demo of Templating.app or try the app for free on the Atlassian Marketplace.
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