Roll up dates on your timeline

This page refers to the timeline view in Jira and not your plan, the cross-project planning tool only available as part of Jira Cloud Premium and Enterprise.

Unless otherwise noted, the timeline view in Jira is the same for both company-managed and team-managed projects.

 

If the Start date and/or Due date fields on a parent issue are empty, the timeline infers its duration based on the dates assigned to child issues. We refer to this as a roll-up. These dates automatically update as those of the child issues change, but are overridden by any manually set dates.

If your timeline is using these rolled-up dates, you’ll see an arrow icon when you hover on the schedule bars:

When the roadmap is rolling up dates, you'll see these arrows on your Jira Software Cloud issues

In order to roll up dates:

  • parent issues can’t have a start and/or end date set. Manually set start and/or due dates override any inferred values. Bear in mind that manually adjusting the length of a schedule bar via drag and drop assigns a date to your issue.

  • all child issues need to be scheduled with either start and end dates or sprints (for scrum teams).

Roll-up values for scrum teams

For scrum teams, you can choose to schedule child issues on your timeline according to the sprint to which they’re assigned or using their start and end dates. Learn how to change which dates your timeline shows child issues.

If you choose to schedule them according to sprint dates, the schedule bars align with the sprints at the top of your timeline.

If you choose to show them using start and end dates, their scheduling bars align with dates at the top of the timeline.

The date of each issue’s assigned sprint is used to roll up dates to parent-level issues. In the example below, the parent-level task Cheddar King infers its dates from the three child issues Fermentation, Develop flavor, and Find your inner cheese. These child issues are scheduled to last two sprints, so the parent issue is begins with the first sprint and the ends after the second.

What you'll see when you roll up dates in your project roadmap in Jira Software Cloud

Roll-up values for kanban teams

Since kanban issues are scheduled using the Start date and Due date fields, a roll-up on the timeline uses the earliest and latest scheduled dates to determine the duration of the parent.

Partial roll-ups

If the start or due date of a parent issue can’t be inferred, its schedule bar fades out in that direction. This is what’s called a partial roll-up, as shown below:

A partial rollup in Jira Software Cloud is when the dates of the parent can't be inferred.

To fix a partial roll-up, make sure that all of your child issues have both start or due dates.

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