Skip to content
Snippets Groups Projects
New issue look: Off

Better use lists to manage linked issues

    • Closed Issue created by Victor Wu @victorwu

    Background

    • Users want to manage their issues in a way to do epics / meta issues.
    • Users want to have a parent issue, with child issues.
    • Use cases include organizing and viewing relationships.
    • Managing dependencies between issues.
    • Managing timelines and scope of parent issues over time.

    Problem

    • The use case of organizing and viewing relationships can already be done via GitLab lists. These are issues that are building on this design:
    • The problem is that users are either:
      • Unsure that this the correct intended solution.
      • Unable to discover from the UI that this is a solution.
    • How can we better improve the interface of task lists to allow users to manage linked issues. We want to encourage users to use tasks lists to create epics / meta issues.

    Designs

      Child items ...

      2. Activity

      • Victor Wu
        Victor Wu @victorwu ·
        Author Reporter

        @tauriedavis @smcgivern @jschatz1 : Relationships between issues and epics are a highly requested feature. I want to leverage our existing features as much as we can to solve these problems. For this one, is there something we can build on the FE in the edit description web form UI to better help users manage epics.

      • username-removed-419655 added ~874211 ~14281 labels

        added ~874211 ~14281 labels

      • username-removed-443319
        username-removed-443319 @smcgivern ·
        Contributor

        I'm not sure if task lists, as opposed to just lists, are really needed here? https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/1369 wouldn't change the status of a task in a task list, but it would change the display of an issue reference :thinking:

      • Taurie Davis
        Taurie Davis @tauriedavis ·
        Developer

        This looks similar to https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/17942 which would include the title of an issue/MR when included in a list view.

        However, I'm not sure a (task) list that includes a title is really the answer to linking issues. I think of including the title as an improvement but not a solution to the parent/child problem.

        We ourselves want to move away from meta issues for giant task lists, so why would we want to encourage users to do this? https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/1592

      • Victor Wu changed title from Better use task lists to manage linked issues to Better use lists to manage linked issues

        changed title from Better use task lists to manage linked issues to Better use lists to manage linked issues

      • Victor Wu
        Victor Wu @victorwu ·
        Author Reporter

        @smcgivern @tauriedavis : I was confusing task lists with just pain lists. You are right, lists already suffice as a solution here. I updated the issue title / description to not conflate the prob less.

      • Victor Wu
        Victor Wu @victorwu ·
        Author Reporter

        @tauriedavis : Meta issues are not useful for us in scheduling. But meta issues are still useful for us to planning large features. Basically it's a way to organize multiple features that are related together.

        "Milestones" group features in a common development time period.

        Meta issues or "epics" or "parent issues" group multiple issues together that are related.

        https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/17942 is definitely going in the right direction in what I envision. But that one is more for solving the display use cases. I'm looking for the use cases where users create links to other issues when editing the description. Currently, the way to do that is simply to type / paste the issue. I think that's a great simple solution. But perhaps the feature is not that discoverable. Is there a way in the UI that we can improve the discoverability of this?

        I believe this is the right approach for solving the parent/child problem for now. It is flexible and allows us to make small iterations. I don't want to make deep / "native" links between issues just yet.

        That's why I'm looking for a design solution here. What do you think?

      • Jacob Schatz
        Jacob Schatz @jschatz1 ·
        Maintainer

        I think that's why we need to make the meta issue a little more pretty and official. Right now a meta issue is just an issue. If it somehow got identified (even if it still opens as a regular issue), when you add meta to the title, maybe it allows you to enter a list of issues as well as description.

      • Victor Wu
        Victor Wu @victorwu ·
        Author Reporter

        @jschatz1 : I like that idea. Although I would suggest a different term than "meta", since I don't think it's a very agile term, afaik.

        I'm looking for something like that. Just some simple FE trick/tweak, but that surfaces very useful functionality. This is sort of like the WIP feature in spirit.

      • Jacob Schatz
        Jacob Schatz @jschatz1 ·
        Maintainer

        @victorwu could respond to different ideas.

      • Victor Wu added ~19492 ~897282 labels

        added ~19492 ~897282 labels

      • Victor Wu added to schedule label

        added to schedule label

      • Victor Wu
        Victor Wu @victorwu ·
        Author Reporter

        Closing because of https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/2001

      • Victor Wu closed

        closed

      Please register or sign in to reply