In order to cleanly and simply add start and stop dates to a Feature (Epic in our view) you have to enable Planning ("Enable capacity planning and time tracking") for those fields to show up on the Feature page (Features > Board > detail of a feature). That then also enabled the capacity planning on the Epic Board. We don't need that, or want it right now. So then you have to either live with a red line griping about capacity or enter dummy values (999d) in which case it then shows you a dummy bar about capacity which looks silly. just separate out this check box into Enable Dates, Enable Capacity Planning.
We are very interested in having this. I don't want to have to use Capacity Planner as it adds information to the dashboard that would be confusing for my business partners. Please see the screenshot attached.
Brandon - A workaround for this is to add the features to the Release board. Once they are visible there, you can open them and add start/end dates.
It's not perfect, but it stops you from having to enable capacity planning.