How can my Jira admin customize work items for my team?
Your Jira admin can customize the layout and information collected on a work item to match the way your team works.
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Work with requests and work items in Jira Cloud products
Different organizations use Jira to track different kinds of work items, which can represent anything from a software bug, to a project task, or a leave request form.
In Jira Service Management, customer requests are automatically triaged into queues, so you can easily find the work items you need to work on. If you are ready to jump in and learn more about working on and managing customer work items, you're in the right place.
On this page, you'll find a quick overview of everything you can do with a work item, as well as links to pages with more detail.
Boards can display up to 5,000 work items at a time. If your board is trying to display more than 5,000 work items at once, you'll receive an error message, and be prompted to update your filters.
In Jira Service Management, a work item is a packet of work that agents work on. In an IT service project, it represents an incident, a change, and a service request. For example, a customer request of "Our printer is not working" appears as follows in the customer portal:
As an agent, you will pick the work item up internally in the service project to work on and it will look like the following:
If you're a project admin, choose More actions (), then Configure to change the layout of fields in the work item.
You can see related commits, builds, and pull requests to help you evaluate the development status of your work item. Read about the development information for a work item
In Jira, a work item is essentially a packet of work. It could be a small task, like "Remember to order pizza for charity night", or a large chunk of hard work like "Build bridging wall between house and garage." It depends on your project, and how you and your team decide to break down your work into work items.
A work item is broken down into several key areas. You can see all the critical information, like the assignee, due date and description, all in one place.
Project and work item keys
Work item keys
Work item keys are unique identifiers for every piece of work you track with Jira. They are easily recognizable and quick to remember.
You'll see work item keys:
On work items themselves, as a label
In search results and saved filters
On cards on your boards or in a project's backlog
In links connecting pieces of work
In the work item's URL
Anywhere you need to reference the work you're tracking
Work item keys are made up of two parts:
The project key
A sequential number
Project keys
Project keys are a series of alphanumeric characters that describe to people across your Jira site what pieces of work are related to your project. They're the most memorable and recognizable piece of a work item's identifier. For example, our team is codenamed Donut World. We use the project key "DONUT" to help people across Atlassian know and recognize work that relates to our team.
Project admins can create and assign their project's key when they create a new project. Based on the project's name, Jira suggests a recognizable key. If you're a project admin, you can customize this while creating a project by selecting Advanced options. You can also update it in the project's settings. They must be at least 2 characters long and start with an uppercase letter.
Schedule a work item
Add due dates to help your agents prioritize incoming customer requests and find overdue issues that need urgent attention.
Create work items with the CSV importer
Use the CSV importer to create work items based on existing text files from other tools.
Edit and share work items
Resolve your customer requests more efficiently with these tips and tricks.
Move a work item to another service project
Move a work item to another project, to make sure the right team can work on it.
Log time on a work item
Track the time spent working on customer requests with other agents, or fixing a problem that affects multiple customer requests.
Edit multiple work items at the same time
Move work items to a new service project, assign work items to someone else, or change the work items status in a few short steps.
Attach files and screenshots to work items
Share information with your customers by attaching documents, images, and screenshots to the work item view of their requests.
Create work items and subtasks
Create work items to track work needed to help resolve a customer request.
Link to an existing attachments on a work item
Avoid duplicating attachments on work items by reusing them.
Review and modify your work item layout
Reconfigure the field layout of work items so that your agents see what’s most relevant to them in your service projects.
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