Workflows and statuses for boards in business spaces

Statuses and transitions

Two concepts define a workflow:

1. Statuses: the steps in your team’s working process that describe the state of a piece of work.

   • Status categories: Jira lets you collect many statuses under a To do, In Progress, or Done category. These categories help you sort, filter, and report on your work. For example, you might have a Backlog To do status and a Waiting for approval To do status. Or, you might have a Developing In Progress status and an In review In Progress status.

2. Transitions: This is how a piece of work can move between statuses. In order for a work item to move between two statuses, a transition must exist. A transition is a one-way link, so if a work item needs to move back and forth between two statuses, two transitions need to be created. The available workflow transitions are listed on the work item at the top-right corner in a dropdown. 

   • Global transitions: Global transitions allow any status in a workflow to transition to a particular status. For example, you can drag a work item from the To do column directly to the Done column if the Done status has a global transition. More about global transitions

Workflows

Each workflow is composed of a set of statuses and transitions that your work item moves through during its lifecycle, and typically represents work processes within your organization. The path that your work items take is called a workflow. More about workflows

Different work types in your business space can have different workflows. For example, you may want to define a particular workflow or set of steps for a bug to pass through, compared to a task.

Statuses

The board is a visual way to view the status of your work items. The status for each work item can be determined by which column it’s in if your board is grouped by status. More about grouping on the board

If your work item is sitting in the To do column, then that's the status of the work item. You can also view the status by opening the work item, and viewing the status at the top right corner.

Your board’s statuses (in the columns) may differ depending on the template that you’re using or how your admin has configured the workflow. So, depending on which template you’re using for your business space, your board’s statuses may look different across your spaces.

Multiple workflows on your board

If your business space contains multiple work types with different workflows, your board will show work items from all workflows by default. To view work items from a specific workflow, you’ll need to create a new board for each workflow.

First, create a new board:

1. In your space navigation, select Add to navigation ()

2. Select Board, then select Add to navigation.

3. Enter a name for your new board.

Then, filter by work type on the new board:

• From your Jira business board, select Filter.

• Navigate to the Work types section, then select which work types you’d like to show for that workflow.

• If your board is too busy, select Collapse () to minimise a column.

Rearrange the columns in your board

You can rearrange the order of your columns in your board by dragging them to your preferred order. For example, you may want to drag your in-progress column first, so you can easily view what’s in flight. If you change the order of the columns, the new order will only be visible to you.