Statuses and transitions
Two concepts define a workflow:
Statuses:the steps in your team’s working process that describe the state of a task.
See AlsoSeverity vs. PriorityEpics, Stories, Themes, and Initiatives | AtlassianWhat Are The Five Core Business Processes?Everything You Need to Know About Jira Workflows | SmartsheetStatus categories: Jira lets you collect many statuses under a to-do, in-progress, or done category.These categorieshelp you sort, filter, and report on your project work. For example, you might have a “Backlog” to-do status and a “Waiting for approval” to-do status. Or, you might have a “Developing” in-progress status and an “In review” in-progress status.
Transitions:usually, how a piece of work can move between statuses.In order for an issue to move betweentwo statuses, a transition must exist. A transition is aone-waylink, so if an issue needs to move back and forth betweentwo statuses, two transitions need to be created. The available workflow transitions for an issue are listed on the issue view screen at the top-right corner in a dropdown.
Global transitions: Global transitionsallowany status in a workflow to transition to a particular status. Learn more about global transitions.
Workflows
Each Jira Work Management workflow is composed of a set ofstatusesandtransitionsthat your issue moves through during itslifecycle, and typically represents work processes within your organization. The path that your issues take is called a workflow.Learn more about workflows.
The workflow will differ, depending on which template you’re using for your business project. To see which workflow your business project has, select which template your project is using to see its workflow.
Different issue types in your business project may have different workflows depending on the workflow scheme. Learn more about working with issue workflows.
For company-managed projects
Only Jira admins can edit workflows for your company-managed project. Learn more about how to edit or create workflows.
For team-managed projects
Only project admins can edit workflows for your team-managed project. Learn more about how to edit or create workflows.
Statuses
The board is a very visual way to view the status of your issues. The status for each issue can be determined by which column it’s in.
If your issue is sitting in the To do column, then that's the issue’s status. You can also view the issue’s status by opening the issue dialog, and viewing the status at the top right corner.
Your board’s statuses (in the columns) may differ depending on the project template that you’re using or how your admin has configured the workflow. So, depending on which template you’re using for your business project, your board’s statuses may look different from project to project.
You’ll only be able to view a done item in the Done column for 14 days of it being moved there. After 14 days, the board will omit the item. You’ll still be able to see it in the list, timeline, and calendar view.
Multiple workflows on your board
If your business project contains multiple issue types with different workflows, you can easily select which workflow to view on your board.
To view a particular issue type’s workflow, you can:
Select More at the top right of the board view
Select Workflows
Choose which issue type’s workflow you’d like to view.
You’ll only be able to view statuses and transitions associated with the selected workflow on the board
Rearrange the columns in your board
Only Jira and project admins can rearrange the columns in your business project’s board.
You can rearrange the order of your columns (statuses) in your board by dragging them to your preferred order. For example, you may want to drag your in-progress column first, so you can easily view what’s in flight. The order of the columns will be visible to all other teammates in the business project.
