Epics

Group related tasks across sprints and follow a bigger piece of work from start to finish

An epic is a large body of work that is too big for one sprint: a feature, a launch, a migration. You break it into tasks, those tasks land in whichever sprints (or sections) suit them, and the epic shows how far the whole thing has come.

Epics need the Pro plan or above. Below Pro, the Epics page shows an upgrade prompt and tasks have no epic field. Teams that use other words see them in the product too: a Marketing project says Campaigns, HR and Finance say Initiatives, Sales says Account Plans, Legal says Matters. The word follows the project’s template everywhere it appears, including the activity text and the AI chat; changing a project’s template changes the word and leaves the epics themselves untouched.

Epic → Task → Sub-task

Work in Decuga has three levels. Each level has one job:

EPIC “Checkout revamp” — spans several sprints

TASK “Pay button” — in Sprint 4

SUB-TASK “Wire the gateway”

SUB-TASK “Handle declined cards”

TASK “Saved cards” — in Sprint 5

SUB-TASK “Tokenise on save”

Level	What it is	Lives in	Typical size
Epic	A goal or deliverable that groups tasks. Has its own code (e.g. DT-EP-3), owner, dates and status.	No sprint, no stage. It is only a container.	Weeks to months
Task	A piece of work someone can pick up and finish. Has a stage, assignee, points and due date.	One sprint (or the backlog) or one section, and optionally one epic.	Days
Sub-task	A step inside a task. Finishing all sub-tasks is part of finishing the task.	Always the same sprint and the same epic as its parent task.	Hours

A task belongs to at most one epic, and an epic cannot sit inside another epic. Keeping it to one level keeps the picture readable: the epic answers “what is this for?”, the sprint answers “when?”, the section answers “where does it sit?”.

Epic, sprint or section?

They answer different questions, and a task can have all three at once.

	Answers	A task can be in	Used for
Epic	What is this part of?	One epic (or none)	Following a feature or initiative across time
Sprint	When will we do it?	One sprint (or the backlog)	Planning a time-boxed chunk of work
Section	Where does it sit in the list?	One section (Group Tasks)	Organising tasks that have no sprint

Epics work in both Sprint Tasks and Group Tasks. In Group Tasks (which has no sprints) the epic is the way to see several sections’ worth of work as one thing.

Creating an epic

Open Epics in the sidebar under Project Management.
Click New Epic.
Give it a title. Optionally add a description, colour, status, owner, start and target dates, and the roadmap item it delivers.
Click Create. It gets a code such as DT-EP-1.

Field	Notes
Title	Required, up to 200 characters.
Status	Planned, In progress, Done or Cancelled. It follows the tasks automatically (see below), and you can still set it yourself. A Cancelled epic is never changed automatically.
Owner	Any active member of the project.
Start / target date	Optional. The target cannot be before the start. If you leave them blank, the epic shows the span of its tasks’ own dates.
Colour	Used for the epic chip everywhere it appears.
Roadmap item	Optional link to the roadmap feature the epic delivers (needs the roadmap, a Business feature).

Putting tasks in an epic

There are five ways to do it:

In the task: open a task and choose the epic in its Epic card.
From the epic, a new task: open the epic and type a title under Tasks. You are asked where it should go (the Backlog, a sprint, or a section) before it can be added. Nothing is pre-selected.
From the epic, existing tasks: click Link existing tasks, search by title or code, tick the tasks and link them. A task that is already in another epic moves here. Sub-tasks are not listed: they follow their parent.
In bulk: select several tasks in the Backlog and use Epic in the bar at the bottom.
By API, MCP or AI chat: pass epicId when creating or updating a task.

Taking a task out of an epic is the same: pick No epic. Finished or cancelled epics are hidden from the pickers, except on a task that is already in one.

The Epics page

The page lists every epic as a row, like the task lists, with its status, owner, dates and a progress bar. Filter by status, or search by title or code. Click an epic to open it in a modal laid out like the task modal: two columns that scroll on their own, with the dates, description, labels, tasks, attachments, documents and whiteboards on the left, and the progress, status, owner, roadmap feature and a Comments / Activity tab on the right.

In the epic modal	What it does
Description	Rich text, edited in place.
Tasks	The epic’s tasks with their sub-tasks underneath. Add a new task (choosing backlog, sprint or section), link existing tasks, or take a task out with the ✕ on its row.
Attachments	Upload files (up to 25 MB each, counted against your storage like task attachments), download them, delete them. You can drop files onto the box.
Comments	A comment thread with @mentions. Mentioned people get a notification that opens the epic.
Activity	The epic’s own history: edits, status and owner changes, labels, links, and tasks joining or leaving it.
Progress, status, owner, dates	On the right. Change the status, owner or dates straight from the modal. The title is edited in place: hover it and click the pencil next to it. Click the coloured bar at the left of the header to change the colour.
Labels	Free-form labels, with suggestions from the labels already used in the project.
Roadmap feature	Link the epic to the roadmap feature it delivers (if your plan has the roadmap).
Documents	Link AI documents (PRD, design, architecture, …) from the project.
Whiteboards	Link whiteboards from the project.

An epic has its own address. …?section=pm&tab=epics&epicId=<id> opens the Epics page with that epic already open, so you can share a link to it.

People who can manage epics also see edit and delete buttons. Deleting an epic never deletes its tasks: they stay in their sprints and sections and simply lose the epic. Its files and comments are deleted with it.

Epics across the app

Wherever a task is shown, its epic is shown as a coloured chip, so you can see at a glance what a task is for:

Screen	What you see
Sprint Board and Group Tasks Board	A chip at the top of every card.
Backlog	A chip after the title, and the Epics filter.
Sprint list and Group Tasks list	A chip after the title (no filter on the lists).
Gantt	The epic code on each bar and on unscheduled tasks.
Calendar	A colour dot in the month view, the epic code in the week and no-due-date views.
Task panel	An Epic card with a picker, and the change recorded in the activity log.
Epics page	Progress and the task list for each epic.

Filtering

The boards, the Backlog, the Gantt and the Calendar have an Epics filter next to the other filters. Pick one or more epics, or None to see the tasks that are in no epic. The list views do not have one; they show the chip.

On those screens, click any epic chip to filter by it. Click it again to remove the filter. You do not need to open the dropdown. Clicking a chip never opens the task it sits on.

The filter works together with the others (assignee, status, labels, search). A task has to match every filter you have set. Filters are for the session and are not saved with a board.

When exactly one epic is selected in the Backlog, tasks you create there start in that epic.

Progress

An epic’s progress is worked out from its tasks every time you look:

Percentage = tasks done ÷ tasks in the epic.
Not started / in progress / done follow each task’s status (New, In progress, Done).
Story points done and total are shown when tasks have points.
Overdue counts tasks that are not done and whose due date has passed.

The epic’s status follows its tasks too: it becomes In progress as soon as any task (or sub-task) in it is In progress, and Done when every task in it is Done. A Done epic that gets a new or reopened task goes back to In progress. Cancelled epics, and epics with no tasks, are never changed automatically. When an epic moves to In progress, whether you set it or a task starting does, its start date is set to that day if it has none (unless its target date has already passed).

Only top-level tasks are counted. A sub-task is part of its parent’s work, so counting it as well would make the epic look further along (or behind) than it is. Sub-tasks still appear in the epic’s task list, indented under their parent.

Rules to know

A sub-task always has its parent’s epic. It cannot be given a different one on its own; the epic picker on a sub-task is locked. Change the parent’s epic and every sub-task (and their sub-tasks) follows. A new sub-task takes its parent’s epic automatically.
Making a task a sub-task of another moves it into that task’s sprint and epic. Detaching it lets it choose its own epic again.
An epic spans sprints. Its tasks can sit in different sprints, or the backlog. Moving a task to another sprint never changes its epic.
Recurring tasks stay in the same epic each time they repeat.
Deleting an epic keeps every task. Deleting a roadmap item clears the link on epics that delivered it. Deleting a project deletes its epics.
Epics are per project. A task can only be put in an epic of its own project.

Permissions

Reading epics needs only project membership. The rest follows the permission you already use for the same thing on a task:

Action	Permission
Create, edit, delete an epic (including its description, labels, status, owner, dates and roadmap feature)	Manage epics
Put a task in an epic, link or unlink existing tasks	Update tasks
Add a new task from the epic	Create tasks
Upload and delete attachments	Manage task attachments (the same permission as on tasks)
Link documents	Link documents
Link whiteboards	Manage whiteboards
Comment	Comment

Role	Create, edit, delete epics	Put tasks in epics
Project Owner, Product Owner, Product Manager, Scrum Master	Yes	Yes
Scrum Team Member	No (can still link tasks, attach files, comment)	Yes
Service Desk roles, Change Manager	No	No (no task permissions)
Custom roles	Only if you grant “Manage epics” in the role editor	With “Update tasks”

Importing epics from Jira

The Jira connector brings Jira epics across as Decuga epics and keeps the structure Epic → Task → Sub-task, on Pro and above.

In Jira	In Decuga
Epic issue (type Epic)	An epic. Title, description and target date (due date) are copied. Jira’s status category sets the epic’s status: To Do → Planned, In Progress → In progress, Done → Done.
Story, task or bug whose parent is an epic	A task in that epic.
Story with an “Epic Link” (older company-managed projects)	A task in that epic. Decuga finds the Epic Link field for your site automatically.
Sub-task	A sub-task of its parent task, in the same sprint and epic as the parent.

Epics are imported before the issues, so every issue can point at its epic. Epics ignore the status filter, because a task may belong to an epic that is already done.
Running the import again updates the epics already imported instead of creating copies. Title, description, status and target date follow Jira; colour, owner, start date and roadmap link you set in Decuga are kept.
A re-import does not take a task out of an epic you chose in Decuga.
A sub-task whose parent is not part of the import (filtered out, or in another Jira project) is imported as an ordinary task.
On Free and Starter, epics are not created. Jira epics keep coming in as ordinary tasks, as before, and nothing is lost. Upgrade to Pro and re-run the import to get real epics for new imports.

API, webhooks & AI

What	Details
REST API	All under `/api/projects/{projectId}/epics`: list, get, create, update, delete, `/progress` and `/{epicId}/tasks` (list, link and unlink tasks), `/activity`, `/attachments`, `/documents` and `/whiteboards`. Pro and above for every call. Tasks carry `epicId` (set it, or send `clearEpic: true` to remove it).
Webhooks	`EPIC_CREATED`, `EPIC_UPDATED`, `EPIC_DELETED`. See the webhooks docs.
AI chat and MCP	Tools: list_epics, get_epic_progress, list_epic_tasks, create_epic, update_epic, delete_epic, and epicId on create_task and update_task. Ask “how is the Checkout epic going?”.
Activity	Epic created and deleted, and every change of a task’s epic, appear in the activity feed and the task’s history.

Plan requirements

Feature	Free	Starter	Pro	Business
Epics and epic filters	-	-	✓	✓
Epic progress and the Epics page	-	-	✓	✓
Jira epics imported as epics	-	-	✓	✓
Epics in AI chat, MCP and API	-	-	✓	✓
Linking an epic to a roadmap item	-	-	-	✓ (roadmap is a Business feature)

If an account moves below Pro, its epics and the tasks’ epic links are kept, but hidden in the app, and the epics API answers with an upgrade message. Upgrading again brings everything back as it was.

FAQ

Can a task be in two epics?

No. One epic per task keeps progress honest. If work really serves two goals, put it in the main one and mention the other in the description, or use labels.

Can an epic contain another epic?

No. There is one level of epic. If you need a layer above, use the roadmap or goals to group epics.

Do epics have a sprint?

No. An epic spans sprints. Its tasks are scheduled into sprints individually.

Why does my sub-task’s epic picker look greyed out?

A sub-task always has its parent task’s epic. Change the epic on the parent and the sub-task follows.

Why is the epic’s task count lower than the number of tasks I see?

Sub-tasks are not counted separately; they are part of their parent task. They are listed under it in the epic.

Does closing an epic close its tasks?

No. Setting an epic’s status changes nothing else. It works the other way round: the epic follows its tasks.

Does the epic status update by itself?

Yes. As soon as any task in the epic is In progress, the epic moves to In progress. When every task in it is Done, the epic becomes Done. If a Done epic gets a new or reopened task, it goes back to In progress. Cancelled epics and epics with no tasks are left alone. Each automatic change is recorded in the epic’s activity.