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Assign statuses and edit columns in a team-managed project

This page is for team-managed projects

If the lower-left of your project sidebar says you're in a company-managed project, check out these company-managed project articles instead.

Learn more about the difference between company-managed and team-managed projects.

By default, a board's columns are assigned the default Jira statuses To do, In progress, and Done. You can change this to suit your way of working.

For example, you may create a custom status to capture work In review, and you'll probably want to map that status to an appropriate column on your board, too.

All team-managed projects start out with the Jira default workflow. This means default columns are assigned a default status, like this:

Column

Status

To do

To do

In progress

In progress

Done

Done

Learn how to manage how your work flows in Jira team-managed projects.

You must have the administrator role in your project to do the following things described on this page. Learn more about team-managed project roles.

Configure your columns and statuses

As you advance your team’s way of working, it’s likely you’ll create new, custom statuses and columns. Multiple columns can affect the flow of your board—it might become too busy and tough to navigate.

To free up your board, you can use the Columns and statuses settings and assign multiple statuses to a single column. This is particularly effective when the statuses have something in common and ladder up to a phase or process, which the column can represent.

When a column's assigned multiple statuses, each status is represented as a “drop zone” on your board’s columns. This lets your team move work to different statuses within the one board column.

To access the Columns and statuses settings:

  1. If not already there, navigate to your team-managed Jira Software project.

  2. From your project’s sidebar, select Project settings > Board.

This will land you directly in the Columns and statuses settings. This is a replica of your board’s columns and their associated statuses, but with advanced configuration options.

Assign an existing status to another column

Consider how you’d like to arrange your board. You may choose to group together common statuses by the stage or step they represent.

Statuses are created and managed in the workflow editor. Learn how to view, add, or remove statuses in your project.

To move a status between columns:

  1. If not already there, navigate to your team-managed Jira Software project.

  2. From your project’s sidebar, select Project settings > Board.

  3. In Columns and statuses, hover over the relevant status. The entire card is interactive.

  4. Select, then drag-and-drop the status onto your chosen column.

  5. Once you’re happy, select Save changes. The changes you’ve made will apply to your board.

Unassign an existing status from a column

You can unassign statuses to reduce clutter on your board. This is handy when you use multiple statuses to track your work, but only need certain issues to be visible on the board. If you haven’t assigned a status to a column, any issues with that status won’t be visible on the board and backlog.

To unassign a status from a column:

  1. If not already there, navigate to your team-managed Jira Software project.

  2. From your project’s sidebar, select Project settings > Board.

  3. In Columns and statuses, hover over the relevant status.

  4. Select, then drag-and-drop the status to the left panel titled Unassigned statuses.

  5. Once you’re happy, select Save changes. The changes you’ve made will apply to your board.

When you create a new status in the workflow editor, it’ll be unassigned by default.

Additional Help