Set up work types in team-managed spaces
This page is for team-managed spaces
To check whether your space is team-managed or company-managed, select More actions (•••) next to the space name in either the header or the sidebar. At the bottom of the menu that opens, your space details will be shown.
If you're in a company-managed space, check out these company-managed space articles instead.
More about the difference between company-managed and team-managed space.
Work types distinguish different kinds of work in unique ways. They help you identify, categorize, and report on your team’s work across your Jira site. They can help your team build more structure into your working process.
By default, team-managed spaces label all your tasks as either Task, if you chose to start with a Kanban space, or Story, if you chose to start with a Scrum space.
To view your space’s work types: Next to your space’s name in the sidebar, select More actions (•••), then Space settings, then Work types.
Multiple work types help you search and sort the work your team takes on, track the progress of specific types of work, even estimate how well your team responds to bugs or how fast they complete larger initiatives.
You can customize your work types to match any method of project management you want. We recommend agile methodologies, and we provide suggested work types to help you classify tasks to work in an agile way.
You must have the following to do the things described on this page.
Role: Administrator
Permission: Administer spaces
Add suggested work types to your team-managed software space
You can customize your work types to match any method of project management you want. Jira software spaces recommend agile methodologies, and we provide suggested work types to help you classify tasks to work in an agile way. More about the agile methodology
To add suggested work types:
Next to your space's name in the sidebar, select More actions (•••), then Space settings, then Work types.
From the sidebar, select + Add work type.
Choose one of the suggested work types from the list.
Select Add.
You can add up to 30 work types.
Your new work type appears in the sidebar, alongside the other work types your space uses. You can set a work item's type when you create a new work item in the space or on a board.
By default, team-managed software spaces come with these suggested work types:
Parent work types
Epic. Agile teams use epics to track larger sections of work composed of smaller tasks, bugs and user stories. Jira uses the suggested epic work type to power other features in team-managed spaces, like roadmaps and reports. To use these features, you must use the suggested Epic work type (and avoid creating your own custom work type called "Epic"). More about managing epics
Standard work types
Bug. Agile teams use the bug work type to track problems with their software, such as user interface discrepancies, broken functionality, or other niggles experience by users.
Task. You can use the task work type to categorize miscellaneous tasks – like technical investigations, administrative work, or other space-adjacent tasks.
Story. Agile teams use stories to capture feature requests and development work expressed as user goals.
Subtask work types
Subtask. Sometimes work ends up being more complicated than you expected. Subtasks let you break down a bug, task, or story into smaller discreet tasks. Jira uses the suggested subtask work type to power other features in team-managed spaces like swimlanes on the board, and progress tracking while viewing a work item.
To use these features, you must use the suggested Subtask work type (and avoid creating your own custom work type called “Subtask”). In team-managed spaces, subtasks are called “children” of standard work items like bugs, tasks, or stories. More about managing subtasks
Create custom work types in your team-managed software space
You can create your own work types to truly customize how you track your space and the information you collect to carry out different types of work.
To add your own work types:
Next to your space's name in the sidebar, select More actions (•••), then Space settings, then Work types.
From the sidebar, select + Add work type.
Select Create work type.
Give your work type a name, description, and an icon.
Select Create.
Again, you can add up to 30 work types and they’ll appear in the sidebar, alongside the other work types your space uses.
You can set a work item's type when you create a new work item in the space or on a board.
Currently, you can only create custom "standard" work types. You can't create custom "parent" or "subtask" work types.
Edit work types in your team-managed software space
Your work type’s name, icon, and description helps people scan, spot, and and quickly distinguish different types of tasks — especially when they appear on your board, in search results, or reports.
Edit the name, icon, or description of a work type
To edit the details of a work type:
Next to your space's name in the sidebar, select More actions (•••), then Space settings, then Work types.
From the sidebar, select the work type you want to edit.
Select the work type's name, icon, or description and edit it how you like.
For your icon, you can also upload a custom image or choose one from the list to Select.
When you’re editing your work type, you can also select the Required checkbox for any fields you want to make mandatory.
Select Save changes.
Your work type's name, icon, and description updates everywhere in Jira.
If you mark fields as required, once saved, new work items of that type can’t be created unless the required field is filled out.
Change a work type's workflow
To edit the workflow of your work type:
Next to your space's name in the sidebar, select More actions (•••), then Space settings, then Work types.
From the sidebar, select the work type you want to edit.
Select Edit workflow.
Adjust the workflow as needed.
To save your changes, select Update workflow.
From the dropdown, deselect lozenges to specify which work type the workflow will apply to.
Select Save.
Restrict access to an work type in your team-managed software space
You can’t restrict work items on the Free plan. More on team-managed roles and permissions
Some tasks may contain sensitive or confidential information. For example, to get their job done, software teams may require access to personally identifiable information (PII) or sensitive financial data. You can easily create an work type to estimate, prioritize, and track this type of sensitive or confidential work. And, you can restrict who sees that type of work to specific roles in your space.
To restrict newly-created work items:
Next to your space's name in the sidebar, select More actions (•••), then Space settings, then Work types.
From the sidebar, select the work type that you want to restrict access to.
Choose the lock icon at the top-right of the work type.
Select the roles that can view new work items by default from the dropdown.
Select Restrict.
Any newly create work items are restricted to the roles you’ve nominated. Previously-created work items are unaffected. Roles that have permission to Restrict any work item can change a work item’s restriction while viewing it.
Deleting a custom role that has associated work item restrictions will make the work items unaccessible to the role.
For example, if there’s a custom role Developer, and work items are restricted to that role only, then the work items become inaccessible when the role is deleted. If work items are restricted to a set of roles, then the work items can be accessed by other roles if one role is deleted.
Delete work types from your team-managed software space
To delete an work type:
Next to your space's name in the sidebar, select More actions (•••), then Space settings, then Work types.
From the sidebar, select the work type you want to delete.
Select More actions (), then Delete work type.
If you have work items that use that type, we'll warn you about them. You'll have to change their type to something that you actually use in the space, or else things can break. Don't worry, Jira will walk you through how to update those work items, if needed.
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