Defining Status Field Values
Statuses are used to represent the position of the issue in its workflow. A workflow represents a business process, represented as a set of stages that an issue goes through to reach a final stage (or one of the final stages). Each stage in the workflow (called a workflow step) is linked to an issue status, and an issue status can be linked to only one workflow step in a given workflow.
JIRA ships with a set of default statuses that are used by the default workflow. You can add your own statuses and customize the workflow, as well as change the names, descriptions and lozenges for existing Statuses.
On this page:
Defining a New Status
- Log in as a user with the JIRA Administrators global permission.
- Choose
> Issues. Select Statuses to open the View Statuses page, which lists all statuses, along with a form underneath to add a new status.
Keyboard shortcut: g + g + start typing statuses - Complete the Add New Status form towards the end of the page:
- Name — specify a short phrase that best describes your new status.
- Description — add a sentence or two to describe what workflow step this status represents.
- Category — Select from the three available categories. The category determines the color of the status lozenge that is used for your new status. These categories follow our design guidelines and help provide consistency across Atlassian applications.
Note, the category name (e.g. "New") is not shown on the status lozenge.
Next steps:
Now you will need to associate your new status with a workflow 'step'. See Configuring Workflow.
Deleting a Status
The View Statuses page can be used to edit and delete Statuses. Please note that only Inactive statuses (i.e. statuses that are not used in any workflow) can be deleted.
A Delete link for deleting a Status will only appear next to the Edit link of an Inactive status.