Documentation for GreenHopper 6.2.x. Documentation for earlier versions of GreenHopper is [available too].

What is a board?

A board displays issues from one or more projects, giving you a flexible way of viewing, managing and reporting on work in progress. There are two types of boards in GreenHopper:

  Scrum board — for teams that plan their work in sprints. More about Scrum
  Kanban board — for teams that focus on managing and constraining their work-in-progress. More about Kanban

You can use a board that somone else has created, or create your own — you can create as many boards as you like. Creating a new board is simple:

  1. Choose which project(s) the board will display, using JIRA’s Query Language (JQL)
  2. Layout status columns
  3. Set Swimlanes — based on assignees, parent/sub-task issues, or JQL queries of your choice
  4. (optional) Set Quick Filters

Accessing a board

To view a board,

  1. Log in to JIRA.

  2. Click the Agile link's down-arrow in the top navigation bar, then select your preferred board from the resulting dropdown menu.

    (info) If this is your first visit you will be prompted to create a new Board.

  3. Your board will be displayed.
  4. Click Plan, Work or Report, depending on what you need to do.

Plan Mode

Screenshot: a Scrum board in 'Plan' mode (click to enlarge)

In Plan mode you can:

  • Prioritise the Backlog — Create issues for your backlog, rank and estimate them, and drag-and-drop to add them to a sprint.
    (info) Right-click selected issues to add them to a sprint, send them to the top/bottom of the backlog, export them to Excel, view them in the JIRA Issue Navigator, or perform
     Bulk Operations
    .
  • Estimate Stories — You can use the 'J' and 'K' keys to move through issues in the backlog and get details on the right-hand side of the screen. Plug in your estimates or story points as you go.
    (info) Note that, by default, the Story Points field is only available to issues of type 'Story' or 'Epic' — you can change this as described in GreenHopper JIRA Configuration.
  • Create Sub-Tasks — To break a story (issue) down into implementable chunks, go to the sub-task tab (click the folder icon) to view and create sub-tasks.
  • Organise via Epics — Group related stories into an epic. Click EPICS to view the Epics panel, where you can create epics, drag-and-drop issues into epics, and filter by epics.
  • Plan Versions — Assign issues to upcoming versions. Click VERSIONS to view the Versions panel, where you can create and edit versions, assign issues to versions via drag-and-drop, and filter by versions.
  • Plan, and Plan Again — When you're happy with the stories for the iteration, start a sprint and the stories will move into Work mode. While a sprint is active in Work mode, you can still plan subsequent iterations in Plan mode (click Add Sprint), but you won't be able to start them until the active iteration is completed. (You can, however, drag and drop an issue in Plan mode onto the active sprint.) Note that you can only start (or complete) a sprint if you have 'Administer Projects' permission for all projects that match the board's filter.

An issue will only be visible in Plan mode if:

  • the issue matches the board's Saved Filter (see Configuring Filters); and
  • the issue's status maps to one of the board's columns (but not the 'Done' column).

Tab legend
TabClick to ...
Resize the Issue Detail View

View the issue's details:

  • Summary, Story Points and Remaining Estimate fields (editable)
  • Status, Component, Labels, Affects Version and Fix Version, plus any fields you have added
  • Reporter, Assignee, Date Created, Date Updated
  • Links (plus a button for quickly creating new links)
View the issue's Description field.
View any comments on this issue.
View any files attached to this issue.
View a convenient summary of the issue's sub-tasks (plus a button for quickly creating new sub-tasks).
View any test sessions for this issue (if you are using Bonfire).

View any commits for this issue (if you are using the DVCS Connector).


Work Mode

Screenshot: a Kanban board in 'Work' mode (click to enlarge)

In Work mode you can:

  • Work on Issues — Choose the highest ranked issues in the 'To Do' column and drag them to the 'In Progress' column. (See Transitioning an Issue.) As you complete each issue in the 'In Progress' column, drag it to the 'Done' column.
    (info) Right-click selected issues to add them to a sprint, send them to the top/bottom of the backlog, view them in the JIRA Issue Navigator or perform
     Bulk Operations
    .
  • Release a Version — Click Release to create your new version and mark it as 'released' throughout JIRA and GreenHopper. (See Releasing a Version (Kanban).)

(info) Note:

  • each column maps to one or more JIRA statuses (see Configuring Columns).
  • resolved issues are shown in strike-through font, e.g. DEMO-1.
  • sub-tasks are shown slightly indented, with their parent issue key shown above.
  • for Kanban boards, the dots at the bottom of each issue indicate the number of days the issue has been in its current column. Hover over the dots to see the total number of days.

  • column constraints apply to the total number of issues in a column, regardless of whether some issues are currently hidden because a Quick Filter is in use.

  • swimlanes can be based on criteria of your choice. Swimlane issue counts are affected by Quick Filters, that is, issues hidden by a Quick Filter will be excluded from the swimlane count.
    (tick) Press "-" to expand/collapse all swimlanes.

  • for Kanban boards, you can specify a Work sub-filter, which refines the issues returned by your board's filter (see Configuring Filters). By default this sub-filter includes issues with no fix version or unreleased fix versions. So when the Release link is used to release a Kanban version, the completed issue will no longer be shown in the Done column.

  • an issue will only be visible in Work mode if:
    • the issue matches the board's Saved Filter (see Configuring Filters); and
    • the issue's status maps to one of the board's columns; and
    • the issue is in an active sprint.

Report Mode

The following reports are available:

(info) Note that the reports are board-specific, that is, they will only include issues which match the board's Filter.

On this page:

Related pages:

Using the Navigation Area

Rapid Board Navigation Bar

  1. Instant Filter (Plan mode only) — Type an issue key, issue type, or part of the issue summary, and GreenHopper will instantly start searching for matches and filtering the displayed backlog, letter by letter as you type.
  2. Sprint dropdown (Work mode only) — Select the sprint whose issues you wish to view.
  3. Quick Filter: 'Only My Issues' — Only display issues which are assigned to you.
  4. Quick Filter: 'Recently Updated' — Only display issues which were updated in the last 24 hours.
    (info) Click a Quick Filter to apply it, then click Clear all filters to turn it off.
    (info) If any custom Quick Filters have been configured for this board, they will appear next to 'Only My Issues' and 'Recently Updated'.
  5. Plan — Plan and allocate work (see Using Plan Mode).
  6. Work — Transition issues from one status to the next (see Using Work Mode).
  7. Report — View a report (see Using Report Mode).
  8. 'Tools' dropdown — Configure, copy or delete your current board, or create a new one. Expand/collapse all swimlanes (Work mode only).
  9. Compress header — Hide the header area to give more room on main area of the screen.

 

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48 Comments

  1. Anonymous

    Sept 30, 2011

    I would like to see an option to have different colors for different projects instead of having different colors for different issue types.

    1. Jason Tucker

      Oct 14, 2011

      I created individual swimlanes for each projects, but yes - the option to change colors could be useful as well.

    2. Anonymous

      Nov 23, 2011

      I can't figure out how to colour my issues, they don't have assigned colours as per Task board, just grey.  Any ideas, have searched config !

      1. Rosie Jameson [Atlassian]

        Nov 24, 2011

        At this stage the card layout is not configurable on the Rapid Board. If you would like to see this feature added in future, please log a request here (in the GreenHopper project).

        1. Anonymous

          Jun 26, 2012

          When is this likely to be made possible if at all?

          1. Anonymous

            Jun 26, 2012

            See the whole tragedy at https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/GHS-3922 ... (sad)

             

  2. Dave Tollefson

    Nov 11, 2011

    It would be useful (and save user time) if you also listed the "bad differences" in the list of "significant differences", including:

    • RB doesn't allow control of the "card" contents - you get what you get
    • RB doesn't allow control of list/summary/card view
    • RB doesn't show the flagged indicator
    • RB doesn't allow control of what fields are shown in the detail view - it even shows fields that aren't configured for the issues in the project(s) shown
    • RB doesn't support multiple constraints, column-configurable constraints, or constraints based on statistics/other fields - only item count
    • RB doesn't support a "quick hide" of a column (really useful for a 10 column kanban board which loses info when displayed)

    I love the new features of RB, but the "loss" of the above means we can't just switch over to it, even for our Kanban teams.  They have to use both RB & TB, switching back and forth for the different benefits.  In reality, most of them are sticking with the TB for day to day use, because of the ease of configuring and seeing what's important to them quickly.

    1. Nicholas Muldoon [Atlassian]

      Nov 13, 2011

      Thank you for the feedback Dave, very useful for roadmap planning. 

  3. David Allen

    Nov 15, 2011

    I agree with the enhancement requests suggested by Dave.  The thing that really annoys me is the information available in the details view - it rarely contains the information I really want, so I find myself clicking on Edit and then on the link to the issue as usually displayed in JIRA.

    I use Rapid Board to aggregate a view across several projects and I miss the ability to easily assign releases to versions as can be done in the planning board.  I'm not sure how best to incorporate that in the GUI.  One possibility would be via a menu that pops up when left clicking on the issue icon (or a new icon) on the card.

    I'd also like the option of gathering sub-tasks together with their parent task with the ability to  expand/contract individual parent tasks (in which case I would expect assignment to column and swimlane to apply to the parent only but filters to also apply to sub-tasks).  Maybe this conflicts with the philosophy, but I'd find it useful to be able to turn it on and off.

    Rapid board is promising, but it's not yet quite there (which is not a surprise or a criticism).

    1. Rosie Jameson [Atlassian]

      Feb 25, 2013

      Please watch upcoming releases for the ability to assign issues to versions.

      (NB. the Issue Detail View is now configurable)

  4. Ganga Selvarajah

    Nov 23, 2011

     Hi Nick,

    As a project admin, I would like to have an option to merge released version to a specific version via Rapid Board instead go to JIRA Project Admin-->Version-->Manage Version option.

    Please consider this option....

    Thanks

    Ganga S

  5. Anonymous

    Dec 21, 2011

    Is it possible to make the cards in rapid board view smaller? Now, even on a big screen with 1920x1200 our board is not fully displayed. We have to scroll the page all the time. The cards should be more compact to have a full picture of a board.

  6. Ganga Selvarajah

    Dec 21, 2011

    Hi Nick,

     As today, we can’t see the Kanban team progress visually on the Rapid Board.  

     Is it possible to show the progress chart on the Rapid Board based on number of issues (Standard issues)?

     Thanks

    Ganga S

  7. Thomas Johnson

    Feb 04, 2012

    Is there any way to change what information is displayed on a rapid board card, or to do something like color or visually mark the card based on different criteria?

    1. Rosie Jameson [Atlassian]

      Feb 06, 2012

      You may like to watch, vote or comment on GHS-3922 - Getting issue details... STATUS

  8. Thomas Pieber

    Mar 01, 2012

    For rapid views there is no "outline view" available. We are currently waiting for a task board - improvement to remove the "other issue"-section in the outline mode, but the current development seems to move in another direction.
    Are there any plans to display issues in a rapid view with grouped subs in the same way as displayed in the task board (except the "other issues"-section, which seperates the existing priorization in issues with and without sub issues, that is something I don't understand) ?

  9. Mark Gibaud

    Mar 10, 2012

    +1!

    Would be good to have this at standup as a quick way to move issues.

  10. Tom Moors

    Apr 03, 2012

    Are the sprints tied to a certain Rapid Board? E.g, I'd like to create a Project Manager board containing all statuses and one for developers containing only the items they need to care about. When I create a sprint on the Project Manager Board, will I be able to get the contents of that sprint on the Dev Board?

    Thanks!

    1. Shaun Clowes

      Apr 10, 2012

      Hi Tom,

      No, the Sprints aren't tied to certain boards, only issues are assigned to Sprints. A Rapid Board finds the Sprints that exist by first finding all the issues and then seeing which Sprints they reference. As a result what you suggest (two boards, one for devs and one for PMs) will work, for example the Dev board might include a subset of statuses compared to those on the PM board. 

      Thanks,
      Shaun 

  11. Anonymous

    May 16, 2012

    Congratulations on the Rapid Board - it's very slick and has huge potential!

    Please may we request a compact view so that we can fit more cards on the screen.  It's the only limitation that's preventing our teams from switching over from the Task Board.

    Thanks!

  12. Anonymous

    Jun 04, 2012

    How do you connect between the RB and the regular planning board / task boards and version management.

    I'm getting confused between the sprints and the version...

    how do i tell the Jira/Green Hopper that sprint #1 will be released as version 2.1.45 ?  

     

  13. Daniel Nugent

    Jun 18, 2012

    Can't be arsed to try and get our SEN from the JIRA admin, so I'll just ask this here: is there any way to actually click on links inside the description on the Rapid View's pop up panel? Every time I try to it just switches to the edit box. I have to go to the individual story page to click on any frickin' links.

    1. Nicholas Muldoon [Atlassian]

      Jun 19, 2012

      Hi Daniel,

      This has been fixed - please request an upgrade via your JIRA Administrator.

      Apologies Daniel, I have just been corrected. This is in fact not fixed yet although the team is aware of the issue.

      Thanks,
      Nick 

      1. Daniel Nugent

        Jun 19, 2012

        This is also an issue with links in the comments section of the pop up panel too, in case they weren't aware of that aspect of it.

  14. Niamh Fitzgerald

    Jul 15, 2012

    Hi,

    Is there any update on when you'll be able to plan multiple sprints using the Rapid Board?

    Also something my team would find quite useful when we're planning sprints is if there are linked issuses to a story that is newly added to a sprint, there's an option to add the linked stories to the sprint as well. Do you have anything like this in your future work?

    1. Rosie Jameson [Atlassian]

      Aug 20, 2012

      Hi Niamh,

      Multiple sprint planning has just been delivered in GreenHopper 6.0.

      Re adding linked issues to a sprint, I don't believe we have this on the roadmap – you may like to log an issue in the GreenHopper project?

      Cheers,
      Rosie

       

  15. Anonymous

    Jul 19, 2012

    I really like the rapid board over the other views. One question though: how do I disable the preview pane of the rapid board? I do not wish to see that pane under any circumstances. I want to be able to click on an issue link and load its full issue page no matter what.

     

     

    1. Rosie Jameson [Atlassian]

      Jul 23, 2012

      Hi, there isn't a persistent setting for this, but you can Ctrl-click on an issue key to open the JIRA 'View Issue' screen.

       

  16. Anonymous

    Jul 23, 2012

    Hi,

    I believe this used to be default behaviour, but was changed - is there a way to configure a Kanban rapid board so that the Column Constraint can be "Issue Count (excluding subtasks)"?

    It seems useful to be able to break a task down into individual subtasks, for organisation/tracking reasons. But I would regard them as part of the same, single item of "Work In Progress", by Kanban definitions (not context switching etc). So I wouldn't want the subtasks to count towards the column constraint.

    I realise I can configure the board to hide subtasks from display, but they still send the column over limit, which partially defeats the purpose.

    Can this be made configurable?

    Alternatively, are there any suggestions for how else I could structure my recording of issues?

    thanks

     

    1. Rosie Jameson [Atlassian]

      Aug 20, 2012

      Thanks for the input. You may like to vote on GHS-3772 - Getting issue details... STATUS

  17. Anonymous

    Aug 30, 2012

    Can you assign sub-tasks to a sprint but not the actual story?  I've only been able to assign the story itself to a sprint using the new board.

    1. Rosie Jameson [Atlassian]

      Sept 02, 2012

      Sorry, no – sub-tasks are always attached to their parent story.

      1. Anonymous

        Sept 05, 2012

        Apologies, my question was mis-stated.  I understand sub-tasks are always a child of a story.  However, let's assume my story has multiple sub-tasks that will span several sprints.  I don't want to assign the parent story to the sprints, instead just the sub-tasks.  Can this happen in the new board?  Thanks.

  18. Mike ambrosone

    Sept 17, 2012

    Is there a way I can assign other users to manage a board? other than being an administrator.

     

    Thanks

  19. Anonymous

    Nov 01, 2012

    In your picture, how do I query "Upcoming Sprint 2"? 

  20. Anonymous

    Nov 14, 2012

    After update to 6.0, Instant Filter stopped work on Plan mode (sad)

    1. MattS

      Nov 15, 2012

      Do you mean the search box at the top right in Plan? Happened for us too recently

      1. Rosie Jameson [Atlassian]

        Nov 19, 2012

        Matt, can you please contact Support about this? Many thanks, Rosie

  21. Anonymous

    Dec 18, 2012

    Is there a permission configuration I can use to disallow certain users to create their own GH rapid boards? I would like most of my developers to only used the "official" (pre-created) boards (as they otherwise can for example move stories into a sprint which are by default filtered out in the official boards due to not being ready in the backlog to be picked up for spring planning).

    1. Rosie Jameson [Atlassian]

      Dec 18, 2012

      Yes, you can achieve this by NOT granting them the "Create Shared Objects" permission (for more details please see Creating a Board )

  22. Henric Johansson

    Jan 07, 2013

    We are using stories as swimlanes, is there a way to show an indicator of sorts on where the actual story is in regards to the colums, to show the current status without having to open up the details of the story?

  23. Tom Vercellotti

    Jan 31, 2013

    Can the sprint (or iteration ) value that is presently associated with a story be queried or shown in a report in Jira?  I cannot seem to find any fields that represent the presently assigned sprint value in the issues view.  It would be nice to be able to generate reports that are grouped by sprint.  Also, it would be nice to associate an issue with a sprint while editing the issue in JIRA instead of having to use the planning board to achieve this.  thoughts?

  24. Anonymous

    Feb 01, 2013

    Can we bring back the issue type legend above the taskboard? It was easier for our teams to be able to distiguish what the tickets meant when this option was available. 

  25. Anonymous

    Feb 19, 2013

    In Work Mode, is it possible to add custom fields for display? This would be an awesome way for our team to review schedules as a whole.

    What we have set up right now, is a dashboard with filters for every team member. We meet to cover everyone's schedules at the beginning of the week by reviewing this dashboard and covering any questions or concerns. The irritating thing about this method, is in order to edit fields like the "Due Date", we have to manually go into the task and update it. Greenhopper grants the ability to edit a task on the fly (within the same tab).

    What's keeping us from pulling the trigger on Greenhopper is, if we can't see due dates or remaining time, we are still facing a similar annoyance.

    1. Rosie Jameson [Atlassian]

      Feb 19, 2013

      You can currently configure the Issue Detail View, but at this time not the Card (please see GHS-3922 - Getting issue details... STATUS )

  26. Sean M

    Apr 17, 2013

    Is it possible to show labels similarly to the way "epics" and "versions" are displayed on each line-item? Often the labels are important information in planning and it can be a pain to have to look at the details of each story to see the labels. Components would be another good one to be able to show in each item's summary.

    1. Rosie Jameson [Atlassian]

      Apr 19, 2013

      You may like to watch/vote/comment on GHS-3922 - Getting issue details... STATUS  – thank you

    2. Henric Johansson

      Apr 19, 2013

      I'd actually like to expand on this and have the possibility to add "labels" (live epics and versions, not the field) or icons based on JQL, that way you can build as complex as you like to visualize the properties of an issue?



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