Documentation for JIRA 4.4. Documentation for other versions of JIRA is available too.

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 customise the workflow, as well as change the names, descriptions and icons of existing Statuses.

On this page:

Defining a New Status

  1. Log in as a user with the 'JIRA Administrators' global permission.
  2. Select 'Administration' > 'Issues' > 'Statuses' to open the 'View Statuses' page, which lists all statuses, along with a form underneath to add a new status.
    (tick) Keyboard shortcut: 'g' + 'g' + start typing 'statuses'
    Screenshot 1: the View Statuses screen
  3. To add a new status, fill in the 'Add New Status' form.
    • In the 'Name' field, specify a short phrase that best describes your new status.
    • In the 'Description', add a sentence or two to describe what workflow step this status represents.
    • In the 'Icon URL' field, specify the path of an icon-sized image (no greater than 30x35 pixels) which has been placed somewhere inside JIRA the JIRA Installation Directory (or is accessible from an HTTP address).
      We recommend placing them in /images/icons:
      Screenshot 2: the /images/icons directory

      (info) JIRA ships with a number of images that can be used as status icons. These images are located in the /images/iconsdirectory inside the JIRA Installation Directory and includes:
      • status_assigned.gif
      • status_closed.gif
      • status_document.gif
      • status_down.gif
      • status_email.gif
      • status_generic.gif
      • status_information.gif
      • status_inprogress.gif
      • status_invisible.gif
      • status_needinfo.gif
      • status_open.gif
      • status_reopened.gif
      • status_resolved.gif
      • status_trash.gif
      • status_unassigned.gif
      • status_up.gif
      • status_visible.gif

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.

(info) A 'Delete' link for deleting a Status will only appear next to the 'Edit' link of an Inactive status.



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