What is an Issue

Different organisations use JIRA to track different kinds of issues. Depending on how your organisation is using JIRA, an issue could represent a software bug, a project task, a helpdesk ticket, a leave request form, etc.

A JIRA issue typically looks like this:

The numbered fields shown in the above screenshot are:

1. Project — the 'parent' project to which the issue belongs.
2. Key — a unique identifier for this issue. (The characters to the left of the hyphen represent the project to which this issue belongs.)
3. Summary — a brief one-line summary of the issue.
4. Type — see below for a list of types.
5. Status — the stage the issue is currently at in its lifecycle ('workflow'). See below for a list of statuses.
6. Priority — the importance of the issue in relation to other issues. (See below for a list of priorities).
7. Resolution — a record of the issue's resolution, if the issue has been resolved or closed. (See below for a list of resolutions).
8. Affects Version(s) (if applicable) — project version(s) for which the issue is (or was) manifesting.
9. Fix Version(s) (if applicable) — project version(s) in which the issue was (or will be) fixed.
10. Component(s) (if applicable) — project component(s) to which this issue relates.
11. Labels(s) (if applicable) — labels to which this issue relates.
12. Environment (if applicable) — the hardware or software environment to which the issue relates.
13. Description — a detailed description of the issue.
14. Assignee — the person to whom the issue is currently assigned.
15. Reporter — the person who entered the issue into the system.
16. Watchers — the number of people who are watching this issue.
17. Due (if applicable) — the date by which this issue is scheduled to be completed.
18. Created — the time and date on which this issue was entered into JIRA.
19. Updated — the time and date on which this issue was last edited.
20. Resolved — the time and date on which this issue was resolved.
21. Estimate — the Original Estimate of the total amount of time required to resolve the issue, as estimated when the issue was created.
22. Remaining — the Remaining Estimate, i.e. the current estimate of the remaining amount of time required to resolve the issue.
23. Logged — the sum of the Time Spent from each of the individual work logs for this issue.

Some of the most important fields — 'Type', 'Priority', 'Status' and 'Resolution' — are described as follows:

Issue Type

JIRA can be used to track many different types of issues. The default types are listed below, but please note that your JIRA administrator may have customised this list to suit your organisation.

Bug — A problem which impairs or prevents the functions of the product.
Improvement — An enhancement to an existing feature.
New Feature — A new feature of the product.
Task — A task that needs to be done.
Custom Issue — A custom issue type, as defined by your organisation if required.

Priority

An issue's priority indicates its relative importance. The default priorities are listed below; note that both the priorities and their meanings can be customised by your JIRA administrator to suit your organisation.

Blocker — Highest priority. Indicates that this issue takes precedence over all others.
Critical — Indicates that this issue is causing a problem and requires urgent attention.
Major — Indicates that this issue has a significant impact.
Minor — Indicates that this issue has a relatively minor impact.
Trivial — Lowest priority.

Status

Each issue has a status, which indicates where the issue currently is in its lifecycle ('workflow'). An issue starts as being 'Open', then generally progresses to 'Resolved' and then 'Closed'; or, depending on circumstances, it may progress to other statuses. Please also note that your JIRA administrator may have customised the available statuses to suit your organisation.

Open — This issue is in the initial 'Open' state, ready for the assignee to start work on it.
In Progress — This issue is being actively worked on at the moment by the assignee.
Resolved — A Resolution has been identified or implemented, and this issue is awaiting verification by the reporter. From here, issues are either 'Reopened' or are 'Closed'.
Reopened — This issue was once 'Resolved' or 'Closed', but is now being re-examined. (For example, an issue with a Resolution of 'Cannot Reproduce' is Reopened when more information becomes available and the issue becomes reproducible). From here, issues are either marked In Progress, Resolved or Closed.
Closed — This issue is complete.

Resolution

An issue can be resolved in many ways, only one of them being 'Fixed'. The default resolutions are listed below; note that your JIRA administrator may have customised these to suit your organisation.

Fixed — A fix for this issue has been implemented.
Won't Fix — This issue will not be fixed, e.g. it may no longer be relevant.
Duplicate — This issue is a duplicate of an existing issue. Note: it is recommended you create a link to the duplicated issue.
Incomplete — There is not enough information to work on this issue.
Cannot Reproduce — This issue could not be reproduced at this time, or not enough information was available to reproduce the issue. If more information becomes available, please reopen the issue.

Note that once an issue has been resolved (that is, the issue's Resolution field is not empty), textual references to that issue will show the key in strikethrough text.