Test Progress and Overall Project schedule tracking

Hi All,

Our team is evaluating Zephyr Scale and I have queries on progress tracking.

Question 1 on Task assignments.

I understand that the test plans, cycles, cases etc cannot be displayed in Jira's sprint backlog (please correct me if I am wrong).  Does it mean that non-testing activities are tracked via the backlog and test execution is via the progress in the Test Cycles?  Is there any way to view all in one place?

Question 2 on Overall Project tracking

Testing phase is one of the parts of the overall schedule.  Is there a way to link the Zephyr Scale data?

Right now our approach is to create epics/tasks that show the different phases (ex. Planning, Design, etc).  Note - we have added plugins to support Waterfall in Jira.  If an epic for Testing is created, the only way is to update the start and end dates is by manual update?

Thanks in advance!