Organize your backlog and map child work items to parents in Azure Boards
Azure DevOps Services | Azure DevOps Server 2022 - Azure DevOps Server 2019 | TFS 2018
After you've added features or epics to your portfolio backlog, organize your backlog by mapping backlog items. You can quickly add and group items into a hierarchy. And also drill up or down within the hierarchy, reorder and reparent items, and filter hierarchical views.
In this article you'll learn how to:
- Open your product backlog or portfolio backlog
- View the tree hierarchy
- Group backlog items using the Mapping pane
- Reparent items through dragging or the Change parent option
Note
To understand the differences between backlogs, boards, taskboards, and Delivery plans, see Backlogs, boards, and plans. If your backlog or board doesn't show the work items that you expect or want, see Set up your backlogs and boards.
Prerequisites
Backlogs are automatically created when you create a project or add a team. Each team has access to their own product, portfolio, and sprint backlogs as described in About teams and Agile tools.
- You must connect to a project. If you don't have a project yet, create one.
- You must be added to a project as a member of the Contributors or Project Administrators security group. To get added, Add users to a project or team.
- To add or modify work items, you must be granted Stakeholder access or higher. For details, see Stakeholder access quick reference.
- To view or modify work items, you must have your View work items in this node and Edit work items in this node permissions set to Allow. By default, the Contributors group has this permission set. To learn more, see Set permissions and access for work tracking.
- To use the Planning pane, the sprints that you want to assign work to must have been selected for your team by a team administrator. To learn more, see Define iteration (sprint) paths and configure team iterations.
Note
Users with Stakeholder access for a public project have full access to backlog and board features just like users with Basic access. For details, see Stakeholder access quick reference.
- You must connect to a project. If you don't have a project yet, create one.
- You must be added to a project as a member of the Contributors or Project Administrators security group. To get added, Add users to a project or team.
- To add or modify work items, you must be granted Stakeholder access or higher. For details, see Stakeholder access quick reference.
- To view or modify work items, you must have your View work items in this node and Edit work items in this node permissions set to Allow. By default, the Contributors group has this permission set. To learn more, see Set permissions and access for work tracking.
- To use the Planning pane, the sprints that you want to assign work to must have been selected for your team by a team administrator. To learn more, see Define iteration (sprint) paths and configure team iterations.
Note
Stakeholder access users for a private project can't drag items to map or reparent them or to assign their sprint.
Note
Stakeholder access users can't drag items to map or reparent them or to assign their sprint.
Open your backlog from the web portal
From your web browser, open your product backlog.
(1) Check that you've selected the right project, (2) choose Boards>Backlogs, and then (3) select the correct team from the team selector menu.
To select another backlog, open the selector and then choose a different team or select the View Backlog directory option. Or, enter a keyword in the search box to filter the list of team backlogs for the project.
Tip
Choose the
star icon to favorite a team backlog. Favorited artifacts (
favorited icon) appear at the top of the team selector list.Check that you have selected Stories (for Agile), Issues (for Basic), Backlog items (for Scrum), or Requirements (for CMMI) as the backlog level.
(Optional) To choose which columns should display and in what order, choose the
actions icon and select Column options. To learn more, see Change column options.
(1) Check that you've selected the right project, (2) choose Boards>Backlogs, and then (3) select the correct team from the team selector menu.
To choose another team, open the selector and select a different team or choose the
Browse all backlogs option. Or, you can enter a keyword in the search box to filter the list of team backlogs for the project.
Tip
Choose the
star icon to favorite a team backlog. Favorited artifacts (
favorited icon) appear at the top of the team selector list.Check that you have selected Backlog items (for Scrum), Stories (for Agile), or Requirements (for CMMI) as the backlog level.
(Optional) To choose which columns should display and in what order, choose the
actions icon and select Column options. To learn more, see Change column options.
From your web browser, open your team's product backlog. (1) Select the team from the project/team selector, choose (2) Work, (3) Backlogs, and then (4) the product backlog, which is Backlog items (for Scrum), Stories (for Agile), or Requirements (for CMMI).
To choose another team, open the project/team selector and select a different team or choose the Browse option.
Note
The images you see from your web portal may differ from the images you see in this article. These differences result from updates made to your web app, options that you or your admin have enabled, and which process was chosen when creating your project—Agile, Basic, Scrum, or CMMI. The Basic process is available with Azure DevOps Server 2019 Update 1 and later versions.
Show parent tasks and expand the tree hierarchy
You can set various options to view backlog work items using the View options menu. To learn which options to set based on the tasks you want to accomplish, see Configure your backlog view.
To view Parents or a tree hierarchy, choose the
view options icon and slide Parents to On.
The hierarchical view displays. From this view, you can reparent items by dragging a child item to a new parent.
Use the
Expand and 
Collapse icons to expand or collapse one level of the hierarchy.
You can set various options to view backlog work items using the View options menu. To learn which options to set based on the tasks you want to accomplish, see Configure your backlog view.
To view Parents or a tree hierarchy, choose
View options and slide Parents to On.
The hierarchical view displays. From this view, you can reparent items by dragging a child item to a new parent.
Use the
Expand and
Collapse icons to expand or collapse one level of the hierarchy.
From the product backlog page, set Parents to Show when you want to drill up or down within the hierarchy. You can also drag items to reparent items from this view.
Use the
Expand and
Collapse icons to expand or collapse one level of the hierarchy.
Map items to group them under a feature or epic
If you've already created your backlog, and now you want to organize it, you can do that most easily by mapping child items to parents.
Choose
View options and select Mapping.
The Mapping pane displays immediately.
Find Unparented backlog items that may appear at the end of the parented set of backlog items. Parents must be turned on in view options.
To map features to epics, select the Features backlog from the backlog selector. The Epics Mapping pane will automatically display.
Choose
View options and select Mapping.
The Mapping pane displays immediately.
Find Unparented backlog items that may appear at the end of the parented set of backlog items. Parents must be turned on in view options.
To map features to epics, select the Features backlog from the backlog selector. The Epics Mapping pane will automatically display.
To map a backlog item under a feature, you first turn on mapping from your backlog (Backlog items, Stories, or Requirements). Next, find the Unparented backlog items group by turning the Parents control to Show. Unparented backlog items will appear at the end of the parented set of backlog items.
Drag items that are currently unparented to the feature under which they belong. Also, you can drag a backlog item to a different feature to change its parent. This mapping creates parent-child links from feature to user stories, which is captured in the 
(links) tab.
You can multi-select backlog and sprint backlog items in the same way as you multi-select items from query results.
It's the same process to map features to epics. From the Features backlog, drag features to an epic listed under the mapping pane.
Change the parent task and reorder items
When you need to change the order or grouping, drag the item to its new location.
You can reparent an item using the mapping pane, or drag it within the hierarchy to change its parent.
You can only reparent backlog items under other features, and features under other epics.
Also, to change an item's priority within a group, drag the item up or down within its hierarchical group. Reordering from a portfolio backlog works the same as when you moved items into priority order on your product backlog.
Limitations on reordering backlog items owned by other teams
If you find you can't reorder a backlog item, check whether the 
info icon appears in the first column as shown in the following image.
You can reparent items owned by other teams, but you can't reorder items owned by other teams. For more information, see Backlogs, portfolios, and Agile project management, Work with multi-team ownership of backlog items.
Change a parent of multiple backlog items
From a product or portfolio backlog, you can multi-select several work items and choose Change parent… to link the items to a parent work item.
Add portfolio backlog levels and boards
If you need more than two portfolio backlogs, you can add up to two more for a total of five backlog levels.
You can add them by customizing your process, adding new work item types, and then configuring your backlogs and boards. You can also add or modify the fields defined for a work item type (WIT) or add a custom WIT. For details, see Customize an inheritance process and Customize your backlogs or boards (Inheritance process).
You can add them by either customizing your inherited process or modifying your XML definition files. You can also add or modify the fields defined for a work item type (WIT) or add a custom WIT. To learn how, see the following articles based on the process model used to update your project:
Inheritance process model:
On-premises XML process model:
You can add them by defining additional work item types and then customizing your process configuration. You can also add or modify the fields defined for a work item type (WIT) or add a custom WIT. To learn more, see Customize the On-premises XML process model and Add a portfolio backlog level.
Display rollup progress, counts, or totals
Product and portfolio backlogs support the display of rollup columns. You can add one or more rollup columns to display progress bars, counts of descendant work items, or totals of select numeric fields. Your settings persist for each page you customize and are only valid for your views.
Progress bars indicate the percentage of descendant items within a hierarchy that are closed or completed. Counts display the total number of descendant items. And, Totals provide a sum of numeric fields, such as Effort, Story Points, Completed Work, or Remaining Work of descendant items.
For example, progress bars are shown here for a portfolio backlog.
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