Azure devops. Epic need to set as parent for a feature

Question

In our organization, we use azure devops integrated with servicenow. In devops we need to create feature that must be an child of an epic. If no epic is found as parent, we need populate a alert to add a parent to the feature.

Answer 1

Currently, azure devops does not provide a field about the parent related link, so we cannot directly set the process rule for the parent related link.

As a workaround, we can first create a custom field named setEpicAsParent for the feature work item type to populate a alert to add a parent to the feature.

Organization settings -> Process -> choose the inherited process -> choose Feature work item type -> New field:

Then add a custom rule like below:

When a feature item is created, the user needs to select true in the setEpicAsParent field, otherwise the item cannot be saved.