Build a custom Jira tree view that reveals hidden dependencies and keeps your team aligned

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Build a custom Jira tree view that reveals hidden dependencies and keeps your team aligned

Georges Petrequin

Published on 30 June 2025

10 min read

An illustraed Jira board with a custom tree view of work items, lightbulb, and cogs illustration overlaid on top

Georges Petrequin

Published on 30 June 2025

10 min read

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When Jira's default hierarchy doesn't cut it

Why most custom hierarchy workarounds fall short

Workaround #1: Jira Cloud Premium or Enterprise with Plans

Workaround #2: renaming epics

Workaround #3: Combine Jira and Jira Align

How to build a custom Jira tree view

1. Link your work items

2. Open Hierarchy for Jira and see your tree view of work items

3. Focus on key details with Quick Filters

4. Create tailored Saved Views for stakeholders

5. Real-time dashboards for easy reporting

Hierarchy for Jira vs. the alternatives

Conclusion

Stop piecing together project updates manually. Discover how to visualise your Jira work items in a custom tree view that instantly reveals every blocker and dependency.

Every project manager knows the feeling: jumping between tabs, clicking through endless work items to identify blockers, and explaining how three teams' work fits together to move a project forward.

You often end up piecing together updates manually to answer simple questions like, 'What's blocked?', 'What's dependent on what?' or 'Are we still on track?'

It doesn't have to be that way.

By turning your standard list of Jira work items into a custom tree view that shows how every work item—from high-level initiatives to sub-tasks—relates to each other, you'll help your team surface blockers, prioritise more effectively, and stay aligned.

In this guide, we'll show you how to transform a flat list of Jira work items into a clear, custom tree view that surfaces the relationships between work items that can be easily missed in the standard project view.

Key takeaways

Jira's default epic > story > sub-task hierarchy can be limiting for complex projects, making it hard to see relationships between work items, identify blockers without adding custom levels.
Common workarounds to customising the work type hierarchy, like Jira Plans or renaming epics, have trade-offs, often adding cost, breaking reports, or creating confusion.
Hierarchy for Jira offers a powerful solution by creating a custom, visual tree view of your Jira tasks based on existing work item links.
This app allows you to easily filter and customise your view using JQL Quick Filters, save tailored hierarchy views for different stakeholders, and sum up and roll up progress metrics throughout the hierarchy, ensuring your team is always on track to hit your targets.
Hierarchy for Jira gives you a flexible, cost-effective alternative, allowing you to build a completely custom tree view of your work items, without requiring a Jira Premium or Enterprise upgrade.

When Jira's default hierarchy doesn't cut it

Jira gives you three levels to work with: epic, story, and sub-task. That works well for many teams, especially if you've always used Jira's standard work type hierarchy.

But if you're managing multiple teams, tracking larger initiatives, or using a work process like the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), you'll likely run into a few problems:

You can only see one level of task dependencies.
You can't add custom levels, like Feature, between epic and story, or add levels above epic like goals, themes, or initiatives.
There's no clear visual way to see how work items relate to each other.
Blockers can be buried in links.
Workarounds to create a custom hierarchy, like relabelling epics or using components, can break your reports and confuse your team.

You do have options, though. Here are the common ways we've seen teams try to build a customisable tree view in Jira.

Why most workarounds for building custom hierarchies in Jira fall short

If you've ever tried to map out a custom hierarchy in Jira, you've probably come across a few workarounds. Some of them work, up to a point. But most have trade-offs that cost you time, clarity, or accuracy.

Here are the go-to options teams usually try.

Jira Cloud Premium or Enterprise with Plans: powerful, but expensive and with limitations

Jira Premium and Enterprise include a feature called Plans (formerly Advanced Roadmaps). Plans lets you create extra levels above epics, like Initiatives or Themes, which are perfect for high-level planning and reporting.

But there are limits. You can only add new levels above the epic.

Add levels above epic with Jira Plans

You can't insert levels between epics and stories. You don't get a visual tree view of your work items. You'll need to jump between the roadmap and work item views to trace relationships between tasks. And, you have to be on Jira Premium, which isn't always in the budget!

That said, if your current work structure fits within these constraints and you already pay for Premium, it's an option worth exploring.

Renaming epics: looks like it's working, but can fail in the long run

Another workaround that often gets tested is renaming epics to make them behave like features. This gives you room to add a new top-level work item type, like Initiative, above the renamed 'feature'.

At first, it seems like a simple change that solves the problem. But in practice, it gets confusing fast. Reports break when Jira expects an 'epic' but finds something else. Teams lose a shared understanding of what an epic means. Plus, future updates to Jira can clash with these changes, due to the number of updates the Atlassian team push out.

Robert Nadon, Lead Atlassian Architect at Forty8Fifty Labs, specifically called out the dangers of this in our recent conversation, saying:

"One of the things I've actually seen, which is a huge no-no, is to go into epic and rename epic... but that could conflict with future changes [to Jira Cloud] and cause problems."

As you can see, this workaround may work in the moment, but it's risky long term.

Multiple Atlassian tools: gets you closer, but leads to scattered project knowledge

Some organisations try to bridge the gap by using both Jira and Jira Align. High-level work goes into Jira Align, while teams do their day-to-day work in Jira.

That setup can work, but it creates another problem: information lives in different places. Developers lose visibility into the bigger picture. Portfolio managers don't see how the work is progressing. Considering we already spend 25% of our workweek looking for information, this isn't ideal.

Using multiple Atlassian tools was another workaround that Robert Nadon warned us about, based on his experience as an Atlassian Certified Expert. There's no problem with the tools themselves—both Jira and Jira Align are excellent at what they do. But he emphasised that for most teams, "It's better to have everybody working in the same tool."

In short, most of these workarounds add overheads: either direct cost-based overheads or time-based overheads with new admin work added to your plate.

The costs of these overheads aren't always obvious at first, but they may just come back to cause more problems than you started with.

How to build your own custom Jira tree view in 5 simple steps

If you want to build a custom tree view in minutes, without reworking your Jira setup, then Hierarchy for Jira may be the solution you've been looking for. Our app for Jira Cloud lets you visualise your project in a nested tree view, that's customised based on how your unique project is structured.

Here's how to get started.

1. Connect your work items using the links you already have

Hierarchy for Jira reads your work item links to build your custom structure. You don't need to create new work item types or change your default hierarchy.

You can use any of Jira's link types, whether native or custom:

Parent of / Child of.
Blocks / Is blocked by.
Relates to.

Or, you can use custom link types that match the way you work.

If you're starting from scratch, start with a small piece of work, like one initiative or feature, to see how the tree view builds out.

It's worth taking the time to ensure your work is linked in the most relevant way.

Our Product Manager, Darren Ching, highlighted the importance of linking your work items in a recent blog post, saying: "Whether you're starting a new project or picking up an existing one, you need to sit down with your team and talk with them on how to best connect your work items—if they need to be connected."

2. Open the Hierarchy for Jira app and see your visual hierarchy instantly

Once your links are in place, the manual work is over.

Open Hierarchy for Jira from the sidebar in Jira. If it's not already installed, head to the Atlassian Marketplace and start your 30-day free trial (teams of 10 or fewer can use the app for free!).

Your work items will load into a nested tree view, grouped by link type.

a screenshot of the custom tree view in Hierarchy for Jira

No manual setup. The app works across projects, so you'll see connected work even if teams use different Jira boards.

If you're managing work across product, design, and compliance teams, for example, you can see how all their tasks relate without switching views or building dashboards.

Instead of clicking through individual work items to find a blocker, you'll spot the problem in seconds.

3. Show only what matters with customisable Quick Filters

Not every work item matters to every individual or team. To help you focus on the work that matters, Hierarchy for Jira lets you use JQL Quick Filters to highlight the work you need to see, across spaces, at any moment in time. Use Quick Filters to:

View only critical work items (priority = Critical)
Focus on your assigned tasks (assignee = currentUser())
See all open work items in the current sprint (Sprint in openSprints()).

Whether you're a project manager, product manager, individual contributor, or just want to keep tabs on a project, these are like real-time toggles that mean you can zoom in on any specifics and get the information you need.

Here's how Quick Filters can benefit teams in practice: Picture a manufacturing team rolling out a new product line across multiple factories. The procurement, equipment setup, and safety teams each have their own Jira boards.

With Hierarchy for Jira's filters and grouping within the tree view, the Project Manager can create a view that shows only tasks blocking factory certification, grouped by assignee. That makes it easy to follow up with the right people, without clicking into every board or building custom dashboards.

Your filters apply instantly, and you can save different views for different roles.

4. Create tailored tree views for every key stakeholder

Jira is great for managing your team's work. But when it's time to update executives, product leads, or department heads, things get complicated.

With Hierarchy for Jira, you can share a clear, custom view of your project, tailored to the audience viewing it.

Imagine you're working on a software team launching an important new feature. Jira is being used for multiple things at once: developers track sprints, compliance tracks regulatory tasks, and leadership wants to see the big-picture milestones. With Hierarchy for Jira, you can build separate saved views of the project for each group, showing only the work items that matter to them.

Here's how it works:

First, you need to set up your Jira tree view to include all of the information your stakeholders need: set up your columns to pull in all the right data from your work items, and add any Quick Filters you need.

Then, you can save your current view as a 'Saved View'.

Once you have your new Saved View, share it with key stakeholders using a read-only link that preserves your project structure, filter, and fields.

You can create as many custom Saved Views as you need, so no matter who you're reporting to, they get the information they care about.

Once created, there's no admin overhead. The saved view updates in real-time, so your whole team is always up to date.

5. Reduce your time spent on reporting with dynamically updating dashboards

Once your custom tree views are set up, saved, and shared, reporting becomes easy. Instead of building new reports from scratch every week, you can think of any Saved View as a real-time dashboard.

With Hierarchy for Jira, you can choose exactly which column types to add and display, meaning whether you track progress in Story Points Completed, Time Logged, Progress %, or other custom fields, those metrics will always be available to your team.

Because data sums up and rolls up through the hierarchy, you'll see totals and progress indicators at every level, without any complicated spreadsheets or manual calculations required.

The result? Faster, clearer reporting for your stakeholders and more time back for you to focus on your project's bigger picture.

Why teams use Hierarchy for Jira instead of workarounds

You don't need another tool that makes Jira more complicated. You need one that gives you structure, clarity, and flexibility, without breaking your setup or your budget.

Here's how Hierarchy for Jira compares to other options:

Feature / Limitation	Jira Plans	Workarounds / DIY	Hierarchy for Jira
Add levels between story and epic, or above or below epics	✖ Only supports levels above epics	✔ With renaming, but risky	✔ Works above, below, or in between stories and epics
Visual tree view of your hierarchy	✖ No native visualisation	✖ Often requires custom dashboards	✔ Nested tree view built from work item links
Impact on reports and automations	✔ Integrates with Jira reports	✖ Breaks reports and adds inconsistencies	✔ Works with Jira reports, no renaming required
Ease of setup	✖ Configuration heavy	✖ Often inconsistent and fragile	✔ Simple install, reads existing work item links
Cross-project visibility	✔ With some setup	✖ Not always supported	✔ Works across multiple projects out-of-the-box
Cost	High (requires Jira Cloud Premium or Enterprise)	Low upfront, high long-term cost	Free for ≤10 users, competitive pricing to fit small, medium, and enterprise needs
Built for scale and clarity	✔ At the portfolio level	✖ Hard to maintain across teams	✔ Scales with your project, no matter how complex

Ready to give your team the visibility they've been missing?

When your team can see how every task connects to the bigger picture, it's easier to prioritise, unblock, and deliver. You stop chasing status updates and start running smarter projects.

With Hierarchy for Jira, you get:

A clear visual structure, tailored to how your team actually works.
Instant visibility into blockers, dependencies, and progress.
Custom views for every stakeholder, without the need for extra tools or permissions.

You don't need to upgrade your Jira plan or force your team into rigid templates, or introduce new ways of working, like some other apps require. Just install the app, link your work items, and start seeing your project in full.

Ready to upgrade your project management workflow?

Hi there, I'm Jay, Senior Product Marketing Manager for Hierarchy for Jira.

If you're ready to see how the Hierarchy for Jira tree view works in practice, then you can go ahead and start a free 30-day trial—just install the app from the Atlassian Marketplace and get started!

If you have any questions or want a walkthrough of how the app could work for your unique use case, then you can schedule a call with our team below.

Start your free trial Schedule your demo

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Written by

Georges Petrequin

Content Marketing Manager

Georges is a Content Marketing Manager at Upscale with a focus on our Jira apps. He spends his time crafting content that helps our customers solve their everyday work pain points and get more out of their Atlassian tools.

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Project Management