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Workflows and statuses for the board
Statuses and transitions
Two concepts define a workflow:
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 project 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.
Transitions: This is how a piece of work can move between statuses. In order for an issue to move between two statuses, a transition must exist. A transition is a one-way link, so if an issue needs to move back and forth between two statuses, two transitions need to be created. The available workflow transitions for an issue are listed on the issue view screen 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 an issue from the To do column directly to the Done column if the Done status has a global transition. More about global transitions
Workflows
Each business project workflow is composed of a set of statuses and transitions that your issue moves through during its lifecycle, and typically represents work processes within your organization. The path that your issues take is called a workflow. More about workflows
Different issue types in your business project 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.
For team-managed projects
Only project admins can edit workflows for your team-managed project. View more about how to edit or create workflows for a team-managed project
For company-managed projects
Only Jira admins can edit workflows for your company-managed project. View more about how to edit or create workflows for a company-managed project
Statuses
The board is a visual way to view the status of your issues. The status for each issue can be determined by which column it’s in if your board is grouped by status. More about grouping on the board
If your issue is sitting in the To do column, then that's the issue’s status. You can also view the issue’s status by opening the issue dialog, and viewing the status at the top right corner.
Your board’s statuses (in the columns) may differ depending on the project template that you’re using or how your admin has configured the workflow. So, depending on which template you’re using for your business project, your board’s statuses may look different from project to project.
You’ll only be able to view a done issue in the Done column for 14 days of it being moved there. After 14 days, the board will omit the issue. You’ll still be able to see it in the list, timeline, and calendar view.
Multiple workflows on your board
If your business project contains multiple issue types with different workflows, you can easily select which workflow to view on your board.
To view a particular issue type’s workflow, you can:
Select … More at the top right of the board view
Select Workflows
Choose which issue type’s workflow you’d like to view.
You’ll only be able to view statuses and transitions associated with the selected workflow on the board
You can only create the type of issue with the workflow that’s selected
Rearrange the columns in your board
Only Jira and project admins can rearrange the columns in your business project’s 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.
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