Manage board columns and statuses

At its most basic, a column represents the current status of an issue. The default columns of a board are To Do, In Progress, and Done.

As your team’s workflow matures, you may start to introduce more statuses to your team’s working process. To help organize and discuss your team’s work, you can assign multiple statuses to a single column, reducing the number of columns your team uses when moving cards across your board.  

You can add, delete, rename, or move these columns if you wish. You can also choose which workflow status or statuses each column is mapped to, and whether any constraints apply to each column.

You must be a project admin to make changes to your columns and statuses.

Edit which statuses are mapped to specific columns

1. Go to your board.

2. Select More (), then Configure board.

3. Under Map statuses to columns, you can edit which statuses are mapped to specific columns.

   1. To map a status to a column, drag and drop the status from the Unmapped statuses panel to the appropriate column.

   2. To change which column a status is mapped to, drag and drop the status to the new column.

   3. To unmap a status so issues with that status won’t appear on your board, drag and drop the status to the Unmapped statuses panel.

Set column constraints

Setting constraints on columns can help ensure that work is continually flowing through the pipeline. You can specify constraints for all columns, or just some of them.

Constraints trigger a visual indicator when a minimum or maximum number of issues appear in a column. On the board view, if a column constraint is exceeded, then the column header will change color, as follows:

• Red column header — maximum number of issues exceeded

• Yellow column header — minimum number of issues not met

The values of the column constraints will appear at the top of each column you set them for. These values don't have any impact on the number of issues displayed in the columns.

Column constraints apply to the total number of issues in a column, regardless of whether issues are hidden by a quick filter.

To set column constraints of a board:

1. Go to your board.

2. Select More (), then Configure board.

3. In the Set a constraint dropdown list select either Issue count or Issue count, excluding subtasks.

4. Under a column’s name, enter a minimum or maximum value.

5. To remove a constraint, clear the existing value.