Customizing cards

Before you begin

You must be a JIRA administrator or a board administrator for the board to customize its cards.

Configuring card colors

You can base your card colors on issue types, priorities, assignees, or JQL queries. Once you have chosen a method, you can change or delete the colors for each type of card. This can be configured per board (not globally).

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

2. Click Card Colors and change the Colors based on drop-down as desired. If you change to a different method of card coloring, your settings for the old method will be retained so you can switch back to them later if you wish. 

   Read more about the card coloring methods

   Base your card colors on...	Explanation
   Issue types	One color per issue type. A default color will be allocated to every issue type that matches issues on the board. Note, the issue type must already exist in your project to configure the color for it. Also, the color values won't display until an issue is created on your board. You need to create an issue on your board first, to configure the colors for the issue types. Default issue types and colors: Improvement, Task, New Feature, Bug
   Priorities	One color per priority. The default colors are the same as used for priorities in JIRA.
   Assignees	One color per assignee. A default color will be allocated to every user who is or has been an assignee of issues on this board. Note, the color values won't display until an issue is created on your board. You need to create an issue on your board first, to configure the colors for the assignees.
   Queries	One color per JQL query. You can specify whatever queries you wish. Issues that do not match any of your JQL queries will be shown in grey. See JQL for more information about JQL syntax.  Example queries: Show all issues that belong to a particular component, e.g. 'User Interface': project = "Angry Nerds" AND component = "User Interface" Show all issues that are due in the next 24 hours: due <= "24h" Show all issues created by a particular user, e.g.: reporter = "Jane" and reporter = "Bob"

3. Once you have picked a method to base your colors on, customize the colors as follows:

   • Pick a different color for a card — Click the Color square, e.g. .

   • Delete a card color— Click Delete. This effectively resets the card to the default color. If you still have issues matching that card type, refresh the screen to reset the deleted card color to the default color).

   • Move a card color (Query-based only) — Hover over the vertical 'grid'  icon, then drag and drop the color up or down to its new position.

     Note: For Query-based colors, the order is important, as each issue will be colored according to the first query that it matches (e.g. if your first row first row has query "issuetype = bug" and is colored red, and your second row has query "assignee = kevin" and is colored green, then bugs assigned to Dave will appear red).

Adding fields to cards

You can configure cards on a board to display up to three additional fields. The fields can be different for the Backlog and Active sprints, if you are using a Scrum board.

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

2. Click Card layout, then add or delete fields as desired.

3. Enable Days in column to display how many days an issue has been in the board columns.

   Read more about using Days in column

   This indicator is disabled by default for Scrum boards and enabled by default for Kanban boards.

   When you enable days in column, the number of the days that an issue has been in a column are represented by a series of dots on the card itself. The dots can occupy up to the width of the card, or a maximum of 32 dots. This helps you see issues that are stagnating — this is particularly useful when your board is displayed as a wallboard.

   Note that if you move an issue back to a column where it's previously been, the indicator gives you the cumulative number of days the issue has stayed in that column.

   For example, you move an issue to the 'In Progress' column and it stays there for 2 days. You then move the issue to the 'Code Review' column and it stays there for 1 day. During code review, you receive feedback, which requires more development work for the issue, so you move the issue back to the 'In Progress' column and it stays there for 1 day. In this example, the indicator reflects the cumulative value of 3 days for the issue in the 'In Progress' column.

   Disabling this indicator can improve performance. If you have a large instance (i.e. 300,000+ issues, 100+ projects, 100+ boards, or 100+ open sprints), we recommend that you disable this.

Printing issue cards

Whether you're planning work or working on issues for Scrum or Kanban projects, it may also be good to print out these issue cards. You and your team can use the printed cards on a physical board, which can be a replication of your board on JIRA Software. You can print a single issue card or multiple issue cards, if you want. You can also print all issue cards in your current board.

The printed issue cards include the following issue details:

• Summary
• Issue type
• Issue key
• Issue priority
• Estimate
• Assignee
• Epic (optional in Active sprints/Kanban board)
• Version (when printing from the backlog)
• Up to 3 extra fields, depending on your card layout configuration

The printed issue cards fit on A4-, A3-, or Letter-sized pages in both portrait and landscape modes.

See Printing issue cards for more information.

Next steps

 Need help? If you can't find the answer you need in our documentation, we have other resources available to help you. See Getting help.

• Read Printing issue cards to learn how to print issue cards and use a physical replication of your board in JIRA Software.