Kanban board shows or hides completed work unexpectedly in Jira Cloud

Summary

Kanban boards in Jira allow you to hide completed work items older than a certain date.

This feature may cause work items to appear or disappear seemingly at random. We'll explain how this feature actually works and provide troubleshooting steps to resolve why certain work items may not appear on your board.

Solution

"Completed work items" are determined by Status Category

Unlike Jira's scrum boards, Kanban boards use status category to determine whether a work item is complete. Workflow statuses can be assigned one of three categories: To Do, In Progress, and Done. These categories are assigned to each workflow status in the workflow editor.

When a work item reaches a status in the Done category, the Kanban board considers it complete, regardless of which column the status is mapped to on the board. Again, this differs from scrum boards in Jira, which determine complete work based exclusively on whether a status is in the rightmost board column.

"Hide completed work" timer resets when work items are edited

Kanban boards allow you to hide work that is completed after a certain amount of time. This prevents the board from overloading if too many work items are included in the board view. The timeframe can be changed to 1 week, 2 weeks, 4 weeks, or removed completely to show all work. The setting is controlled on your board by navigating to ... (more options) > Configure board > General.

However, even if work has been in a "Done" category status for longer than your board setting, it may still appear on your board. This is because any edits to a work item reset the "complete" timer. This includes edits to any work item fields such as Description, Fix version, or others.

Fix work items not appearing on a Kanban board

If a work item is not appearing on a Kanban board when it should be, it is likely an issue with the board filter, subfilter, or work item status category. Confirm that all of the following are true to ensure the work item appears as it should:

• The board's filter does not exclude the work item

  • Common ways to inadvertently exclude work based on filter include JQL that filters based on Assignee, Team, or work type

• The board's subfilter does not exclude the work item

  • The default Kanban subfilter will remove any work belonging to a Fix version that has been Released (check out our documentation on Releases for more)

• The work item is not in a workflow status belonging to the "Done" category

  • You can confirm this by editing your project's workflows at Project settings > Workflows

Fix completed work items that appear on a Kanban board when they shouldn't

If the inverse of the above problem occurs, and work items that should be hidden still appear on the board, check that the following are true:

• The work item is in a workflow status belonging to the "Done" category

  • You can confirm this by editing your project's workflows at Project settings > Workflows

• The work item has been completed longer than your Kanban board's "hide completed work" setting

  • Check the board setting under Configure board > General - it may have been disabled completely

• The work item has not been edited since it was completed

  • Any edits to a work item's fields will reset the timer on whether the work was completed

  • Edits made within the timeframe of your board's "hide completed work" setting will cause the work to reappear until the timeframe lapses again