Manage priority schemes

Once you're happy with the priorities available in your Jira instance, it's time to associate them with some projects. You can select a different set of priorities for each project by using priority schemes.

What’s a priority scheme?

A priority scheme allows you to associate a subset of priorities with particular projects. You can use it to achieve the following goals:

• Restrict the set of available priorities for a project

• Select a default priority that is assigned to all newly created issues in a project.

A single priority scheme can be reused across multiple projects so that a group of similar projects (i.e. projects which might be used for similar purposes) can share the same priorities. It's also easier to add or remove priorities for these projects because all you need to modify is a single priority scheme. 

Default priority scheme

Jira comes with a default priority scheme that contains all priorities and is associated with all projects until you change it. You can't edit this scheme, but you can associate it as you wish.

To manage priorities, select > Issues > Priority schemes.

1. This is where you can find all priority schemes. 

2. Priorities used by a scheme.

3. A list of projects that use this set of priorities.

4. Actions that you can perform on a scheme: Edit and Delete.

Create a priority scheme

You can create priority schemes to associate different priorities with different projects. For example, if you have priorities “highest”, “high”, “medium”, “low”, and “lowest” in a Jira instance, and you want to associate only “high” and “low” with Project A, you can create a priority scheme to do so.

To create a priority scheme:

1. Select > Issues > Priority schemes.

2. Select Add priority scheme.

3. Enter the name and description (optional) for your scheme.
   Note: We recommend that you add a description to the scheme so that other admins can decide if they want to reuse this scheme instead of creating a new one.

4. Select Add priorities to associate priorities to this scheme. Additionally, you can set a default priority for this scheme.

5. Select Projects to associate projects to this scheme.

6. Select Add priority scheme.

Edit a priority scheme procedure

After you’ve created a priority scheme, you can edit the priorities and projects associated with the priority scheme.

Associate priorities with a priority scheme procedure

To edit priorities associated to a priority scheme:

1. Select > Issues > Priority schemes.

2. Select > Edit for the scheme you want to edit.

3. You can:

   1. Select to remove a priority.

   2. Select Set as default to make the priority a default for the scheme.

   3. Select Add priorities to associate more priorities to the scheme.

4. Select Save changes.

Associate projects with a priority scheme procedure

To associate a priority scheme with projects:

1. Select > Issues > Priority schemes.

2. Select > Edit for the scheme you want to edit.

3. Go to Projects and select the projects you want to associate with your scheme.
   Note: If a project is already associated with another priority scheme, the project will now be associated with the new scheme. You may have to select new priorities for the issues in the project.

4. Select Save changes.

Delete a priority scheme procedure

To delete a priority scheme:

1. Select > Issues > Priority schemes..

2. Select > Delete for the scheme you want to edit.