Use cases · Jira dashboards

Show Jira issues as a tree: epic → story → sub-task, with progress rolled up

"Is there a tree view of issues in Jira?" comes up whenever a team wants the whole epic → story → sub-task structure on one screen: every branch expandable, and the numbers at each level summed from the level below. Jira Cloud shows the hierarchy one level at a time and rolls up by issue count only. Here is what the native screens give you, and how to get a full tree with story points, counts and progress at every level — on a dashboard, or on the epic itself.

What Jira shows natively

• The issue view lists an epic's child work items and a story's sub-tasks — one level each. The progress bar on the epic counts items done; it doesn't sum story points, and a sub-task's estimate never reaches the epic.
• The backlog's epic panel (company-managed projects) shows story point totals per epic, split by status. It is a side panel of the backlog, not a tree, and stops at the story level.
• Plans (Jira Premium) shows initiatives, epics and stories as an expandable hierarchy with estimate roll-ups. Sub-tasks are excluded from both the tree and the numbers, and it is a planning screen, not something you place on a dashboard.
• The issue navigator is flat. parent = PLUG-19 lists a story's children, but there is no nesting, and no totals other than the row count.
• Dashboards have no hierarchy gadget at all. Filter Results shows a flat list; Issue Statistics counts by a field. Neither knows that a row has children.

Where these stop: nothing shows more than one level at a time, nothing sums story points or time through the tree (sub-tasks least of all), and nothing puts the structure on a dashboard next to the other numbers a team looks at.

Which Plugio app?

Three Plugio apps have something called "hierarchy", and they answer different questions. Pick by where you want the tree to live:

Build the tree on a dashboard (Plugio Suite)

The Hierarchy widget takes every epic in the dashboard's scope and draws its full tree. An epic that appears always brings its whole subtree — a branch is never cut in half by a filter.

1. Create the dashboard. Open Plugio Suite from the Apps menu, click New dashboard and set the scope: one or more projects, a JQL query, or a board's sprint.
2. Add the widget. Click + Widget and pick Hierarchy. The default setup already shows Status, Assignee and a progress bar per branch.
3. Compose the columns. On the Data tab, mix two kinds of column. Field columns show the row's own attribute — Status, Assignee, Due date. Value columns are a metric rolled up over each branch:
   Issue count → Dots one square per item, coloured by status Story Points → Bar status split + % done Story Points → Fraction 21 / 43 Original estimate → Number plain total
   Leaf rows show their own value; parents show the subtree total.
4. Decide how sub-tasks count. With sub-tasks shown, Roll up from picks the reading: Lowest level counts each branch at its deepest items (sub-tasks are the real work), Stories & tasks keeps sub-tasks visible but out of every number (they are a checklist). A story with sub-tasks always shows its own checklist bar either way.
5. Choose which epics. Unresolved epics only (the default) or all statuses, in rank order; optionally include epics with no items yet.
6. Set the reading mode. On the Format tab: expand collapsed, epics open, or the whole tree by default; turn on the search box for a quick find over keys and summaries. Search is a view filter only — a parent that stays keeps its full numbers.
7. Share it. Save, share with everyone on the site, and — if the team lives on a native Jira dashboard — add the Plugio Suite Dashboard gadget there and pick this dashboard.

Reading the tree: the caret expands a branch, the issue key opens the issue in a new tab, and hovering a bar, dots or fraction shows the exact split with a total. If a very large scope forces a cut, whole branches are dropped and reported ("Showing 40 of 112 epics") — a rendered bar is never a partial count.

Team-managed projects

Team-managed projects estimate in Story point estimate, not Story points. Pick that field in the value column; for a mixed dashboard, add one value column per field.

Build the tree on the epic (Plugio Panels)

When the question is asked from inside an epic — "how far is this one, and what's left" — the tree belongs on the issue view rather than a dashboard. The Progress widget in Plugio Panels shows the percentage in the sidebar and, on the wide panel below the description, the tree it is computed from.

1. Open Plugio Panels from the Apps menu and create a panel for the project (or start from the Epic Overview template).
2. Add a Progress widget and set its Source to Full hierarchy — the epic's children and their sub-tasks. Direct children stops at stories; Subtasks is the right source when the panel targets stories.
3. Pick the basis: issues (head count), story points, or time — remaining against original estimate.
4. Choose the tree columns for the wide panel: status, priority, assignee, story points, age. Numeric columns sum in the roll-up footer.
5. Add rules if you want the percentage banded — up to 40 red, up to 70 yellow, and so on — and save. Every epic in the project now carries the panel.

Both apps handle the mixed-estimate case — a story and its sub-tasks carrying points — with a per-field setting that decides which level counts, so nothing is silently doubled. The background on why that matters is in the story point rollup post.

Variations

One epic at a time, on a dashboard

Add a Parent filter to the Suite dashboard and make it Editable. The filter bar becomes an epic switcher: viewers pick an epic from the ones actually present in the data and every widget — the tree, a gauge, a pivot — follows.

The sprint's tree

A sprint-scoped dashboard derives the tree from the sprint's issues: the epics touched by the sprint, with only the sprint's stories and sub-tasks under them. Viewers can flip to past sprints.

Time instead of points

Value columns accept any numeric field, including time tracking. Sum of Original estimate as a number next to Sum of Time spent gives an estimate-vs-actual per branch; a derived duration such as cycle time works as an average per branch.

A breakdown instead of a tree

If the question is really "how is this epic's work distributed" — by assignee, by status — the Breakdown widget in Suite and the Breakdown widget in Panels show each epic or story as a stacked bar of its children. Same data, a different shape.

Native vs. Suite vs. Panels

Frequently asked questions

Have a variant of this setup that isn't covered here? Write to [email protected] — we answer fast, and good questions become new pages.