Configuring Columns

Screenshot: the 'Board Configuration' screen — 'Columns' tab.

Note, each column has a blue, yellow or green colour, as shown in the screenshot above:

• The single leftmost column will always be blue, representing items in 'new' ('To Do' in screenshot above) state (as per our design guidelines).
• The single rightmost column will always be green, representing items in a 'successful' ('Done' in screenshot above) state.
• The middle column (or columns if you add more) are always yellow, representing items in progress ('In Progress' in screenshot above).

These columns are important, particularly the leftmost and rightmost column. A number of reports and gadgets show data related to whether an issue is new, in progress or successful. Consider the examples below:

• Sprint Health Gadget — The blue, yellow and green sections of the sprint progress bar reflect the statuses that are mapped to the relevant columns in the column configuration.
• Sprint Report — an issue is considered complete (done) when it is in a status that is mapped to the 'successful' (rightmost) column in the column configuration.

Mapping Columns to JIRA Statuses

Default mappings for new boards

• If you create a new project, by default, statuses are mapped to columns as follows:

  If your board's project is using the JIRA default workflow:

  Default column	Default mapped JIRA statuses
  To Do	Open, Reopened
  In Progress	In Progress
  Done	Resolved, Closed

   ... or ...

  If your board's project is using Simplified Workflow:

  Default column	Default mapped JIRA statuses
  To Do	To Do
  In Progress	In Progress
  Done	Done

    

• If you create a new board for an existing project, by default, the statuses are mapped to columns based on the category for each status. For example, if an status's category is 'Complete' it will be mapped to the green rightmost column ("Done").

Editing the mappings for existing boards

You can change the default status to column mappings, if you wish. For example, if you are using additional, customised JIRA statuses, you will probably want to map them to appropriate columns in your board.

To edit the mapping of JIRA workflow statuses to columns of a board:

1. Navigate to the desired board, then click Board > Configure.

2. Click the Columns tab.

3. Change the mapping statuses as described in the following table and Screenshot 1 (above).

   To do the following:	Do this:
   Map a status to a column	Drag a status from the Unmapped column to the appropriate column on the right.
   Unmap a status from a column	Drag a status from its current column on the right to the Unmapped column on the left.
   Change the column mappings of a status	Drag a status from its original column to its relevant new column.

   All statuses configured in the JIRA server are available from the board Configuration page. However, some statuses (in particular, custom statuses) may not be available for issues on your board if the JIRA workflow (s) used by these issues do not utilise those statuses.

See the Tutorial - Adding a Column to a Board for an example of creating a new column and mapping it to a new JIRA status.

Adding a new Status

If your board is using Simplified Workflow:

1. Navigate to the desired board, then click Board > Configure.

2. Click the Columns tab.

3. Click the Add Status button at the right of the page.
   Note that the Add Status button is only available if you have the JIRA 'Project Administrator' permission for this board's project.

If your board is not using Simplified Workflow, please follow the Tutorial - Adding a Column to a Board.

Deleting a Status

If your board is using Simplified Workflow:

1. Navigate to the desired board, then click Board > Configure.

2. Click the Columns tab.

3. Drag the status to the Unmapped Statuses column.

4. Click the delete icon (trash can) for the status you wish to remove.
   Note: that you can only delete a status if you have the JIRA 'Project Administrator' permission for this board's project.
   You can only delete a status if there are no issues that currently have that status.
   If any other workflows are using this status then the status will be removed from your workflow, but not deleted.

If your board is not using Simplified Workflow, you can only delete a status vis the JIRA administration interface — please see the JIRA documentation on Configuring Workflow.

Setting Column Constraints

Constraints specify how many issues a column can contain. You can specify constraints for all columns, or just some of them.

You can choose to exclude sub-tasks from the count. This is useful if you want to constrain the number of major tasks (stories) your team is working on, rather than the total number of individual tasks. This is likely to be more relevant to Scrum teams than to Kanban teams.

 Current bug ticket for this functionality:  JSWSERVER-10627 - Improve documentation for column constraints in JIRA Software (and JIRA Agile) Closed

To set 'Maximum' and 'Minimum' constraints for a column of a board:

1. Navigate to the desired board, then click Board > Configure.

2. Click the Columns tab.

3. Edit the constraints as described in the following table and Screenshot 1 (above).

   To do the following:	Do this:
   Enable column contraints	In the Column Constraint drop-down, select either Issue Count or, if you don't want to include sub-tasks in the column count, Issue Count, excluding sub-tasks. Setting 'Issue Count' or 'Issue Count, excluding sub-tasks' will show the issue count in each column.
   Set a column's 'Min' constraint	Click the yellow box at the top of the column, type the new value and press Enter.
   Set a column's 'Max' constraint	Click the red box at the top of the column, type the new value and press Enter.
   Remove a column's 'Min' constraint	Click the yellow box at the top of the column, delete the current value and press Enter.
   Remove a column's 'Max' constraint	Click the red box at the top of the column, delete the current value and press Enter.
   Remove constraints for all columns	In the Column Constraint drop-down, select None.