Everything you need to know about Zenhub Sub-issues and Issue Types

After months of conversations with users and close collaboration with GitHub, we’re excited to share a major evolution in how Zenhub provides hierarchy and structure to work: Zenhub Sub-issues & Issue Types. Through our early access program working with teams of all sizes, we’ve seen firsthand how these improvements transform how teams work. We’re rolling it out to all users over the next few days, with additional features released in the coming days and weeks. Here’s everything you need to know.

How to get access

We’ll be automatically turning on the feature for Zenhub users on a rolling basis throughout this week. Once it’s available for you, you’ll see a banner at the top of your Zenhub board. No need to toggle it on.

How to use Zenhub Sub-issues and Issue Types

Check out the following video from George Champlin-Scharff to get a quick overview of all of the new Sub-issue features

Why Zenhub Sub-issues are a game-changer

Effective work organization is essential for software teams using GitHub, particularly when coordinating across multiple repositories and projects. Well-defined systems for breaking down and tracking tasks are key to keeping teams focused and efficient. Although GitHub introduced Sub-issues to address this need, its native design often adds confusion instead of clarity.

Rather than offering structure, GitHub Sub-issues often create disarray and disrupt workflows. Collaboration can falter without a robust system to enforce hierarchy and ensure consistency, and scaling becomes more difficult. Additionally, Sub-issues lack comprehensive visibility, only displaying one level of tasks at a time. These shortcomings can pose significant challenges for engineering teams looking to optimize project management.

Check out our blog to learn more about the challenges with GitHub Sub-issues and how Zenhub enhances users’ experience and overcomes these shortfalls.

What’s coming (and when)

The week of January 13th:

Sub-issues based hierarchy: Break work down naturally with Sub-issues that show the total progress right on your cards and inside issue details. This enables you to get full visibility from a top level OKR, right down to an individual task in one place. Read more about how Sub-issues bridge the gap between strategy and day-to-day development here.

Quick create: Lightning-fast creation of Sub-issues from inside any issue. You can add existing issues as sub-issues as well.

Bulk updating: Quickly set Issue Types or add a parent issue for dozens of issues at a time.

Live status: At-a-glance progress indicators of the To do → In progress → Completed status for all of the work that rolls up into a parent issue.

Issue Levels: Customize Zenhub to match your organization’s work breakdown structure by editing the updated default hierarchy (Objective → Projects → Epics → Tasks → Sub-tasks).

Default Issue Types: Maintain consistency with automated issue types that align with your organization’s hierarchy.

Reporting: Get insights across all levels with our existing reports, which work seamlessly with Sub-issues. With Sub-issues in reporting, you get a full view of all work in flight, and can also focus on the details that matter most, whether it be Projects, Epics, Features, or Sub-tasks.

The week of January 20th:

Goals and Planning Panel: This is a lightning-fast way to navigate from high-level company objectives to day-to-day tasks. It also ensures that your issue is at the right level within the automatic hierarchy and provides transparency on who is working on what.

In the following weeks:

Roadmap support: Soon, you’ll be able to see project progress of your Objectives → Projects → Epics in the roadmap, giving you an at-a-glance view of all work in flight from the top down.

Stay tuned

Keep an eye on the Zenhub Blog for future updates, including Sub-issue and Issue Types feature deep dives, new capabilities, and tutorials. Also, keep an eye on our socials for announcement of several events we’ll be hosting, including AMAs, webinars, and more.