Hierarchy view in GitHub Projects [Public Preview]

[ebndev]

Hierarchy view for GitHub Projects is now available in public preview. You can now view your full issue hierarchy directly in project table views, giving you clear visibility into complex work breakdowns without losing context or switching views.

🔗 What is hierarchy view?

Hierarchy view lets you see the full nesting of sub-issues directly in GitHub Projects.

hierarchy_view.mp4

With hierarchy view enabled, you can:

• Expand and collapse sub-issues up to eight levels deep.
• Group, slice, sort, and filter while preserving hierarchy.
• View and quickly add existing sub-issues that aren’t in the project yet.

Getting started

To enable hierarchy view, open the View menu and turn on Show hierarchy.

Coming soon

We’re continuing to invest in hierarchy view. Next up:

• The ability to create and add sub-issues inline, directly from the project.
• The ability to drag-and-drop reordering and reparenting of sub-issues.
• A synced order between the sub-issue list on issues and the sub-issue list in projects.

[hdm12345]

Thanks for this feature!! I am very happy about it. I do have two points of feedback:

1. In Project view I currently filter out completed and aborted items, using "-status:Completed, Aborted". This works for issues, but currently with the hierarchy view, it does not filter out sub-issues. Could this be introduced as a separate feature or filter option?

2. It would be great if sub-issues stayed open when the page is reloaded, currently they collapse again on reload. A collapse or open all sub-issues would be great as well.

Thanks in advance.

[shawnalpay]

In Project view I currently filter out completed and aborted items, using "-status:Completed, Aborted". This works for issues, but currently with the hierarchy view, it does not filter out sub-issues. Could this be introduced as a separate feature or filter option?

100% agree with this. I would LOVE to use this hierarchy view, but without the ability to suppress what's been completed, there's too much noise for me to use it.

[evi-liu]

Thanks for the helpful feedback! We’re actively exploring both the ability to filter out closed sub-issues and preserving the expand/collapse state.

These are improvements we’re hoping to deliver in the coming weeks :).

[MantisClone]

How to get "Epic" Issue Type, as shown in the video??

[MantisClone]

nvm. Found it: https://github.com/organizations/[organization]/settings/issue-types

[jeremy-farrance]

This is fantastic, really useful for us! But why is this being worked on, when a very related, needed, highly demanded, and obviously missing feature has been left untouched since Dec 2021?

Sort by "last updated", "created"

#8518

[flavienbwk]

Indeed, absolutely crazy to see that while the "created" sorting isn't available yet... What a basic yet essential feature.

[azenMatt]

This is coming next 😄

[jeremy-farrance]

Wait, really?

[aikenka]

This is great, really useful!

Would love to see this enabled in Roadmap view as well!

[justinrobots]

Does this only work when you create and filter by something like Epics in the example given? In a table of all issues in an iteration, I see sub issues nested under their parent, but the same sub issues are duplicated again at the parent level.

[williammorey]

You can acheive what you are looking for by adding the filter no:parent-issue, this will remove issues with a parent (ie sub-issues), but will still keep the sub-issues under the hieratchy view, but it still isnt ideal as this filter will apply to your other views like the board which might not be what you want.

[MakePixelsWork]

What I personally do is create a view that slices by Type, resulting in the same hierarchy as the new nesting solution provides... but only showing each type in their own list.

[evi-liu]

For those using the no:parent-issue filter, how’s it working for you so far? Does it give you the view(s) you’re looking for?

[cvennel-via]

@evi-liu I'm setting up a new project board using no:parent-issue and it lets me get just what I want to see. One small annoyance is I'm trying to order a backlog and the sub-issues within the parent issue based on priority/dependency manually. I can drag and re-order the top level, but to re-order the issues within a parent I have to open a second view focused on just issues with that parent. It would be nice if the drag handles let me order sub-issues as well in the one view.

edit: I just saw that the Coming Soon section mentions exactly what I was requesting 🤦

[Cleve-machine]

@evi-liu the no:parent-issue filter, or the -no:parent-issue does not resolve the original post issue.
The key issue here is that when Task items are nested under a Feature, or and Epic, they then appear in two places:

1. under the parent item, and
2. again as their own row item.

The option of using no:parent-issue does not really work if you have multiple levels of nesting.
The option of filtering out a 'Type' is better, but still not elegant.
The preferable solution would be that nested items did not appear as a duplicate row. That could even just be a toggle switch for the view if needed.

[Shifkan04]

It means GitHub Projects now supports viewing issue hierarchies (parent–child relationships) directly in table view, making it easier to manage complex work breakdowns and see progress without switching views.

[dbeaum0nt]

This is fantastic and was sorely needed. Please add this functionality to roadmap pages as well, it is desperately needed to make roadmaps viable because without hierarchical sorting it is impossible to make an effective roadmap.

[ohiosveryown]

Great to see this ☺️.

[joepavitt-esp]

Just to echo the above comments, this is so greatly appreciated as a new feature, the only gripe I've seen is the duplicate issue problem.

Whilst the filter approach works somewhat, it's not reliable as we often have valid tasks that are isolated in nature, and therefore do not have a parent issue. Using the filter approach means we also lose these items when wanting the hierarchy view.

[Cleve-machine]

@evi-liu An additional issue I have found is that if you are relying on a filter to remove the duplicate items in hierarchy view, then you can't drag and drop child items into an order. You can only drag top level items that have an issue number.
This is actually quite a major drawback.

IMO the end goal here is to have a tree of items which you can drag and drop into an order. (Assuming there is no sort applied.)

[rinas21]

What it does:

Lets you see parent–child relationships (issue hierarchies) directly in project table views.

You can expand/collapse sub-issues up to 8 levels deep.

Maintains hierarchy while grouping, filtering, or sorting.

You can quickly add existing sub-issues that aren’t in the project yet.

Coming soon:

Create and add sub-issues inline.

Drag-and-drop reordering and reparenting of sub-issues.

Sync order between issue lists and project views.

Tips & Feedback from users:

Filtering out completed sub-issues isn’t fully supported yet.

Sub-issues collapse on reload; a “remember expand/collapse state” feature is requested.

Using no:parent-issue filter can reduce duplicates but isn’t perfect for multi-level hierarchies.

Drag-and-drop for child items is still limited.

Takeaway:
It’s a big improvement for managing complex projects, but some features like duplicate removal, filtering, and drag-and-drop of sub-issues need polish.

[janettelomeland]

Thanks for creating hierarchies, a wish is the possibility to save that all should expanded or collapsed. Now it is set to collapsed and it is needed to expand one by one.

[Nonudian]

It would be so cool to have the same thing for board layout, where parent issue would encapsulate their related child issues, rather than having child issues flattened next to parent. It's kind of hard for us to organize work when having a lot of issues with parent-child relationships.