Ability to send initiatives (epics) to JIRA Merged

It's very confusing to have to create an initiative, create a feature, send that feature to JIRA, and then connect that feature to an initiative in order to have it be an epic in JIRA. I need the ability to link initiatives with epics that are already created in JIRA and send new ones directly to JIRA without having to go through so many motions to do that.