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Customize cards

This page applies to company-managed projects only.

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

Before you begin

To configure the board and any of its settings, you must be either:

  • project administrator for the location of the board

  • board administrator for the board itself

Learn more about permissions in Jira Software Cloud.

Benefits of customizing cards

By customizing the layout of the cards on your board, you're bringing just the right level of information to your team's attention, at a glance. You can:

  • Change the card colors to help your team quickly identify the cards on your board as being of a particular issue type, priority, assignee, or anything you choose

  • Add up to three custom fields to display on the cards

An annotated screenshot of sample issues in a scrum backlog

Custom cards surface details for easy scanning in a Scrum backlog This example includes:

  1. Issue summary

  2. Issue details

  3. Custom fields

Sample card in Active sprints of a Scrum board

A annotated sample card in a Scrum board. The card has an issue summary and icons.

Issue cards have three layers of information that are stacked on top of each other, and are always stacked in the same order:

  1. Issue summary.

  2. Custom fields added to the card.

  3. Other related issue information, including issue type, priority, assignee, and estimate.

In both the backlog and board across Scrum and Kanban, the issue summary is consistently at the top level of the card.

To view more issue details, do one of the following:

Issue with highlighted quick-add buttons, share, status, show more section, configuration link, and comment field.

To see the issue details in full view in a new tab or window, right-click on the issue key, and then view the issue in a new tab or window.

Configuring card colors

You can base your card colors on issue types, priorities, assignees, or JQL queries. Once you have chosen a method, you can change or delete the colors for each type of card. This can be configured per board (not globally).

  1. If not already there, navigate to your company-managed project.

  2. Select Active sprints(if you use a Scrum board) or Kanban board (if you use a Kanban board).

  3. Select More () > Board settings.

  4. Click Card Colors and change the Colors based on drop-down as desired. If you change to a different method of card coloring, your settings for the old method will be retained so you can switch back to them later if you wish.

  5. Once you have picked a method to base your colors on, customize the colors as follows:

    • Pick a different color for a card — Click the Color square

    • Delete a card color— Click Delete. This effectively resets the card to the default color. If you still have issues matching that card type, refresh the screen to reset the deleted card color to the default color).

    • Move a card color (Query-based only) — Hover over the vertical 'grid'  icon, then drag and drop the color up or down to its new position.

For query-based colors, the order is important, as each issue will be colored according to the first query that it matches (e.g. if your first row has query "issuetype = bug" and is colored red, and your second row has query "assignee = kevin" and is colored green, then bugs assigned to Dave will appear red).

Base your card colors on...

Explanation

Issue types

One color per issue type. A default color will be allocated to every issue type that matches issues on the board.  Note, the issue type must already exist in your project to configure the color for it. Also, the color values won't display until an issue is created on your board. You need to create an issue on your board first, to configure the colors for the issue types.

Default issue types and colors:

  • Improvement – green

  • Task – blue

  • New Feature – orange

  • Bug – red

Priorities

One color per priority. The default colors are the same as used for priorities in Jira.

Assignees

One color per assignee. A default color will be allocated to every user who is or has been an assignee of issues on this board. Note, the color values won't display until an issue is created on your board. You need to create an issue on your board first, to configure the colors for the assignees.

Queries

One color per JQL query. You can specify whatever queries you wish. Issues that do not match any of your JQL queries will be shown in grey. See JQL for more information about JQL syntax. 

Example queries

Show all issues that belong to a particular component, e.g. 'User Interface'

1 project = "Angry Nerds" AND component = "User Interface"

Show all issues that are due in the next 24 hours

1 due <= "24h"

Show all issues created by a particular user

1 reporter = "Jane"

And

1 reporter = "Bob"

Adding fields to cards

You can configure cards on a board to display up to three additional fields. The fields can be different for the Backlog and Active sprints, if you are using a Scrum board.

To add fields to cards:

  1. If not already there, navigate to your company-managed project.

  2. Select Active sprints (if you use a Scrum board) or Kanban board (if you use a Kanban board).

  3. Select More () > Board settings.

  4. Select Card layout.

  5. Add or delete fields as desired.

You can also enable the Days in column toggle to display how many days an issue has been in the board columns.

Using Days in column

This indicator is disabled by default for Scrum boards and enabled by default for Kanban boards.

When you enable days in column, the number of the days that an issue has been in a column are represented by a series of dots on the card itself. This helps you see issues that are stagnating — this is particularly useful when your board is displayed as a wallboard.

Dots in cards

Number of days in column

A single grey dot, representing 1 day.

1 day

Two grey dots, representing 2 days.

2 days

Two grey dots and one yellow dot, representing 3 days.

3 days

Three grey dots and one red dot, representing 5 days.

5 days

Two grey dots and two red dots, representing 8 days.

8 days

One grey dot and three red dots, representing 12 days.

12 days

Four red dots, representing 20 or more days.

20 or more days

Note that if you move an issue back to a column where it's previously been, the indicator gives you the cumulative number of days the issue has stayed in that column.

For example, you move an issue to the 'In Progress' column, and it stays there for 2 days. You then move the issue to the 'Code Review' column, and it stays there for 1 day. During code review, you receive feedback, which requires more development work for the issue. So, you move the issue back to the 'In Progress' column, and it stays there for 1 day. In this example, the indicator reflects the cumulative value of 3 days for the issue in the 'In Progress' column.

If you have a large instance (i.e. 300,000+ issues, 100+ projects, 100+ boards, or 100+ open sprints), we recommend that you disable this indicator to improve performance.

Printing issue cards

Whether you're planning work or working on issues for Scrum or Kanban projects, it may also be good to print out these issue cards. You and your team can use the printed cards on a physical board, which can be a replication of your board on Jira Software. You can print a single issue card or multiple issue cards, if you want. You can also print all issue cards in your current board.

The printed issue cards include the following issue details:

  • Summary

  • Issue type

  • Issue key

  • Issue priority

  • Estimate

  • Assignee

  • Epic (optional in Active sprints/Kanban board)

  • Version (when printing from the backlog)

  • Up to 3 extra fields, depending on your card layout configuration

The printed issue cards fit on A4, A3, or Letter-sized pages in both portrait and landscape modes.

Need help? If you can't find the answer you need in our documentation, we have other resources available to help you. See Getting help.

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