This tutorial is for Jira Datacentre and Server with Advanced Roadmaps. If you are uisng Jira Cloud or do not have Advanced Roadmaps, please start with this article.
The below example will work for the Initiative > Epic > Story > Task (Bug) > Sub-task hierarchy.
Use Epic Link mapping to put Stories under Epics:
Use Sub-task mapping to link Sub-tasks with their parents:
Use Parent Link mapping to connect everything else, including Epics to Initiatives:
If you copy information only from JIRA to MS Project and do not need to update Epic Link and Parent Link in Jira, you can disable the issue type filters.
To copy the hierarchy from MS Project to Jira, the filters must be configured as shown above. Also, you will need to map Issue Type to a custom text field and populate this field with the issue type for each task that is associated with an issue of a non-default issue type:
That will ensure that the issue type filters in the Parent and Issue Link mappings above work correctly.
To create multiple issue types, e.g., Epics, Stories, Sub-tasks in Jira, you will need to map issue type and populate the mapped column, anyway.
If you are importing issues, map Issue Type as described above, and the issue type will be copied from Jira.