Configuring Card Colours

Card colours allow you to quickly identify cards on your board as being of a particular issue type, priority, assignee, or — thanks to the power of JQL — practically anything you choose.

You can choose to set up your card colours in any of the following ways:

Base your card colours on...	Explanation
Issue Types	One colour per issue type. A default colour will be allocated to every issue type which matches issues on the board. Default issue types and colours: Improvement, Task, New Feature, Bug.
Priorities	One colour per priority. The default colours are the same as used for priorities in JIRA.
Assignees	One colour per assignee. A default colour will be allocated to every user who is or has been an assignee of issues on this board.
Queries	One colour per JQL query. You can specify whatever queries you wish. Issues which do not match any of your JQL queries will be shown in grey.

You can change the colours if you wish. You can also delete colours (for example, if someone leaves your team, you may want to delete the colour allocated to them).

Note that only the owner of a board (or a person with the 'JIRA Administrators' global permission) can configure a board's card colours.

On this page:

Related pages:

Configurable Card Colours for Issue Parameter Visibility

Choosing a different method of card colouring

Select Agile > Manage Boards from the top navigation bar, then click the Configure link corresponding to the board of interest.
Click the Card Colours tab.
In the 'Base card colours on' drop-down, select which method you want to use — either Issue Types, Priorities, Assignees or Queries, as described above.
For each Issue Type (or Priority, or Assignee, or Query), click the current colour to display a colour palette where you can select a new colour or RGB value.

Note that if you change to a different method of card colouring, your original settings will be retained so you can switch back to them later if you wish.

Screenshot 1: the 'Configuration' screen — 'Card Colours' tab.

Changing a card colour

Select Agile > Manage Boards from the top navigation bar, then click the Configure link corresponding to the board of interest.
Click the Card Colours tab.
For each Issue Type (or Priority, or Assignee, or Query), click the current colour to display a colour palette where you can select a new colour or RGB value.

Deleting a card colour

Select Agile > Manage Boards from the top navigation bar, then click the Configure link corresponding to the board of interest.
Click the Card Colours tab.
Click the Delete button for the colour that you wish to delete.
For Query-based colours, deleting a colour will also delete the Query.

Note that deleting a colour for an Issue Type (or Priority, or Assignee) will not delete that Issue Type (or Priority, or Assignee) from your JIRA system.

If you delete a colour for an Issue Type (or Priority, or Assignee) which still matches issues on your board, then that Issue Type (or Priority, or Assignee) will be automatically reinstated on the Card Colours configuration tab when you refresh the screen, and a default colour will be applied.

Moving a card colour

Select Agile > Manage Boards from the top navigation bar, then click the Configure link corresponding to the board of interest.
Click the Card Colours tab.
Hover over the vertical 'grid' icon, then drag and drop the colour up or down to its new position.

For Query-based colours, the order is important as each issue will be coloured according to the first query that it matches (e.g. if your first row first row has query "type = bug" and is coloured red, and your second row has query "assignee = dave" and is coloured green, then bugs assigned to dave will appear red).

Adding a Query-based card colour

Select Agile > Manage Boards from the top navigation bar, then click the Configure link corresponding to the board of interest.
Click the Card Colours tab.
In the blue area, choose the colour, type the JQL (see examples below), then click the Add button.
For syntax, see the JIRA JQL documentation.
If more than one query matches a card, the first query that matches will be the color that is used.

Changing a Query

Select Agile > Manage Boards from the top navigation bar, then click the Configure link corresponding to the board of interest.
Click the Card Colours tab.
Click in the JQL area, modify the existing JQL and click the Update button.
For syntax, see the JIRA JQL documentation.

Some example JQL you might wish to use for your card colours:

Show all issues which belong to a particular component (e.g. 'User Interface'):
```
project = "Angry Nerds" AND component = "User Interface"
```
Show all issues which are due in the next 24 hours:
```
due <= "24h"
```
Show all issues created by a particular user, e.g.:
```
reporter = "Jane"
```
and
```
reporter = "Bob"
```

For more details, see the JQL documentation.

Child pages