Update licensing for epic relationships, related to, blocked by and blocking

Summary

Relationships between epics are available by the Ultimate tier license:

  • Linked relationships: Creating relates to relationships between epics (epic-epic) was restricted to the Ultimate tier.
  • Dependency relationships: Creating blocked by and blocking relationships between epics was also restricted to the Ultimate tier.

For tasks and issues, the rules are different:

  • Linked relationships: Creating relates to between tasks and issues (task-task, issue-issue) was available on the Free tier.
  • Dependency relationships: Creating blocked by and blocking relationships between tasks and issues was available on the Premium tier.

With the rollout of the new epic experience, the ability to create relationships has been extended beyond immediate work item types. This allows users to create links like relates to, blocked by, and blocking between different types of work items (epics, tasks, and issues). However, this change has introduced inconsistencies in the licensing rules for epics:

  • Users can now link between different work item types, such as epic-task and issue-epic, but only Ultimate tier users can create relationships between epics.

Proposed solution

To resolve these inconsistencies and reduce workflow abrasion for users, we will update the licensing rules for epics to align with tasks and issues:

  1. Linked items (relates to) relationships between any work item types will be available at the Free tier, as long as the work item type is available in the tier and the relationship is allowed per the RelatedLinkRestriction database table rules.
  2. Dependency relationships (blocked by, blocking) between any work item types will be available at the Premium tier, as long as the work item type is available in the tier and the relationship is allowed per the RelatedLinkRestriction database table rules.

Scope of work

  1. Update licensing code to extend the linked relationships (i.e. relates to) between all work item types, across Free, Premium and Ultimate tiers.
  2. Update licensing code to extend the dependency relationships (i.e. blocked by and blocking) between all work item types, across Premium and Ultimate tiers.
  3. Validate consistency across all work item types to ensure the licensing model is applied uniformly.
  4. Update documentation to clearly reflect the new licensing rules for work item relationships. (epics docs)
Edited by Amanda Rueda