With JIRA Software 7, projects are run with agile methodologies, either with Scrum or Kanban. When you first create your project, you will get an agile board for your project with a very straightforward setup, containing three columns: To Do, In Progress, and Done.
In this recipe, we will look at how to customize your agile board's column layout to better integrate with your development workflow process.
Proceed with the following steps to start customizing your agile board's column layout:
- Browse to the agile board that you want to customize. You need to be the owner of the board to do this.
- Select Board|Configure option from the upper-right corner of the board.
The recommended approach here is to enable and use the Simplified Workflow options, as shown in the screenshot that follows. By using this option, you can control both your workflow as well as your agile board's column layout, right here. JIRA will tell you if you have Simplified Workflow enabled, and if not, it will prompt and walk you through the enablement process.
Once you have enabled the Simplified Workflow option, you can start customizing your board by using the editor, as shown in the next screenshot. With this editor, you can visually design your board's column layout. If you want to add a new column, simply click on the Add Column button, enter a name for the new column, and it will be added to the board. Doing so will also automatically create a corresponding workflow status, and assign it to the new column, so you do not have to manually match your column layout to your workflow.
Of course, you can also manually assign existing workflow statuses to a column, by simply dragging and dropping them into the desired column.
Make sure you check the Set resolution option for the statuses that are in the last column, which usually represents the end of the workflow as shown in the next screenshot. This way, when you move an issue into that column, JIRA will automatically set the resolution value, so the issues will be considered completed.
Agile board's columns are powered by JIRA's workflows in the background. Usually, workflows in JIRA are structured as a flow chart, with a well-defined path for issues to follow. However, when you have the Simplified Workflow option enabled, the workflow will change from a flow chart structure into a more free-flowing style, where issues can move in and out of any status in the workflow. This makes it much simpler when customizing your agile board's column layout, as you are no longer restricted by the ordering of the statuses.
The next screenshot depicts what a workflow looks like with the Simplified Workflow option turned on. As you can see, every status in the workflow has the All transition next to it, meaning that an issue can enter that status regardless of its current status.
The agile boards you get from JIRA Software (both Scrum and Kanban) all revolve around workflow statuses (columns). However, sometimes you may not want your board to be organized by statuses. For example, you may want the columns to represent priority, assignee, or a custom field you have added. In these cases, you can use the Comala Canvas for JIRA add-on.
https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.comalatech.jira.canvas/cloud/overview
With this add-on, you will get a new Boards menu option for your project, as shown in the following screenshot. The board provided from this add-on is similar to the agile board that comes from JIRA Software, where you can drag and drop the issue card from one column to the other.
The major difference here is that you can use other fields to represent the columns. In this example, we have assignee as the columns, and issue type as the rows.
To make a field eligible to be selected for columns or rows, you need to first enable them, by selecting the Manage Fields menu option from the board. Check the fields you want to use for columns or rows.