Group work with epics

Pro plan Project Member

An epic is a color-coded label that groups related tasks inside a project: a phase, a theme, a deliverable (“Phase 1”, “Onboarding”, “Mobile app”). Tasks keep all their own fields; the epic just ties them together visually so you can groom and report theme by theme.

Epics are per-project. If you need labels that work across projects, use tags instead; tags are organization-wide.

Create and manage epics

Open your project’s Backlog tab and select Epics in the toolbar. The Project epics dialog lists every epic with its color and task count.
Select New epic, type a name, and pick a color from the palette.
Select Add epic.

From the same dialog you can:

Rename an epic: double-click its name or use the pencil icon.
Change its color: click the color swatch and pick a new one. The new color applies everywhere the epic appears.
Delete an epic: the confirmation tells you how many tasks are linked. The tasks themselves are untouched; they just lose the epic label.

Assign tasks to an epic

Open a task and pick the epic in the Epic dropdown, next to the Sprint field. Choosing the empty option removes the task from its epic. The field appears on top-level tasks, not on subtasks, and your organization can hide or relabel it in its form configuration.

You can also set the epic inline from the Grid view, which has an Epic column with a dropdown in every row.

Where epics show up

Backlog: each task that belongs to an epic shows a chip in the epic’s color under its title, so a backlog grooming pass naturally reads theme by theme. See grooming the backlog.
List view: an Epic column is available; turn it on from the view’s column controls (it is hidden by default).
Grid view: same, an Epic column you can enable, with inline editing.

Best practices

Keep the epic list small — 5 to 10 per project. A project with 30 epics has no signal left; each chip becomes another color in a rainbow rather than a meaningful category. The right granularity: epics map to genuine themes a stakeholder would name, not to every sub-feature.
Use color deliberately. Red for “at-risk theme”, amber for “needs validation”, green for “running well”, blue for “in flight”, grey for “future” — pick a convention and hold it across epics. A consistent color reading turns the backlog scan into a status check.
Name epics like phases or deliverables, not like tasks. “Phase 1: Setup” is a good epic; “Setup the database” is a task. The test: would a stakeholder recognize this name in a status update?
Group by epic for theming, not status. Grouping the backlog by epic during grooming is how you spot under-resourced themes. Grouping by status during sprint planning is how you spot bottlenecks. Use both lenses for different conversations.
Delete dead epics rather than leaving them empty. An epic with 0 tasks for a month is signal that the theme retired. Delete it (tasks aren’t affected) so the list stays meaningful.

Troubleshooting / common pitfalls

Epic colors look the same across epics. The palette is finite (about 12 colors). Stay under 8 active epics per project and color reuse won’t happen. Above 8, plan to reuse colors with patterns (e.g., all “infrastructure” epics in shades of blue).
An epic chip isn’t showing on my task. Two causes: (a) the task is a subtask — the Epic field appears only on top-level tasks (subtasks inherit through their parent visually but the field itself is on the parent); (b) the Epic column is hidden in the current view.
The Backlog table doesn’t group by epic. Group-by options in the Backlog are Status / Priority / Assignee / None. Epic chips are visual, not a grouping dimension in the table — for an epic-grouped view, switch to the Grid view or use Reports.
I deleted an epic and can’t restore it. Deleted epics aren’t in the Recycle Bin today; they’re hard- deleted. The tasks they were attached to are intact — just re-create the epic and re-assign.
My task lost its epic after I changed its parent. Tasks inherit nothing automatically from parent moves; the epic field on the task stays where it was. If re-parenting puts the task in a context where the old epic doesn’t apply, update it.

How this combines with other features

Epics + Sprints. A task can belong to BOTH an epic and a sprint. The epic tells you the theme, the sprint tells you the timing. Reports grouped by epic across several sprints show the team’s commitment to that theme over time. See Plan a sprint.
Epics + Reports. Cross-project Reports group tasks by epic — useful for portfolio reviews that ask “how much of last quarter’s work was on Theme X?”. See Run cross-project reports.
Epics + Goals. Goals are higher-level (multi-project, strategic); epics are per-project. A “Customer Activation” goal might have epics in 3 different projects all contributing. See Track goals and OKRs.
Epics + Custom Dashboard. A milestone-timeline or saved-report widget can be scoped to an epic, giving managers a one-glance look at “what’s happening in Theme X this month.” See Build a custom dashboard.

Coming from another tool

Tool	Mapping
Jira epics	Direct concept; Jira epics also per-project, color-coded the same way
Asana	Asana’s projects ≈ Onplana’s projects, and Asana’s “sections” ≈ Onplana’s epics
Linear	Linear “projects” inside a team ≈ Onplana epics inside a project
Trello	Trello has no native epics; labels are the closest
Microsoft Project	Summary tasks ≈ epics for visual grouping

FAQs

What is the difference between an epic and a sprint? A sprint answers “when”: a time-boxed window of work. An epic answers “what”: a theme that can span many sprints. A task can have both at once.

What happens to tasks when I delete their epic? Nothing except the label. The tasks stay exactly where they are, with all fields intact, and simply show no epic chip anymore.

Can an epic span multiple projects? No. Epics belong to one project. For cross-project grouping, use tags or portfolios.

Should every task belong to an epic? Not necessarily. Maintenance tasks, one-offs, and ad-hoc work often make sense without an epic. The rule: if the task belongs to a real theme, label it; if it doesn’t, leave the field blank.

Can multiple epics share the same color? Yes, the system allows it. Whether you want to is a different question — same color across two unrelated epics destroys the visual signal. Use distinct colors unless you mean to convey related themes (e.g., shades of blue for “infrastructure” work).

Do epics affect velocity or capacity? No directly. Epics are a grouping label; velocity reads task counts, capacity reads estimated hours. Epics surface trends in those numbers per theme but don’t change the math.

Can a task belong to multiple epics? No. A task has at most one epic. If the work genuinely spans two themes, split it into two tasks (each in its own epic) or pick the dominant theme.

Plan a sprint — epics complement sprints
Groom the backlog — use epic chips during weekly grooming
Track goals and OKRs — strategic counterpart to epics

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