New Status Button Placement Makes Updates Harder, Not "Easier"
Dear Atlassian Team and Community Members,
I'm writing to offer a counter-perspective on the recent change to the Status button's location, which was announced under the ironic title "Easier status updates for work items".
While I appreciate the stated intention to make Jira more intuitive, for many experienced users and administrators, this change has unfortunately achieved the exact opposite. It has made status updates more difficult and has disrupted established, efficient workflows. The claim that the previous location was "tricky to find" feels disconnected from the daily experience of power users.
Here is a breakdown of why this change is a step backward:
It Makes Updates Slower, Not Faster: The primary issue is the constant need for scrolling. In any realistic issue with a decent description or a few comments, the status button is now off-screen. To perform one of the most common actions in Jira, I now have to scroll to the very top of the page. This new friction stands in direct opposition to the goal of making updates "easier and faster".
It Makes Jira Less Intuitive, Not More: When linking directly to a comment from an email, the user arrives without any context of the issue's current state. They cannot see the status. This forces them to break their concentration, scroll up to find the status, and then scroll back down to the comment. This is the definition of an unintuitive workflow and directly contradicts the goal of "smoother onboarding". For new and old users alike, hiding a key piece of information is confusing.
It Breaks a Logical and Consistent UI Pattern: Your announcement suggests user testing found the old location confusing. I would argue that for seasoned users, its placement within the right-hand details panel was perfectly logical. The Status is a core field, just like Assignee, Priority, and Reporter. Removing it from this group breaks a long-standing, predictable UI pattern that users have relied on for years. It’s possible the feedback gathered was skewed towards brand-new users, while overlooking the muscle memory and efficiency of your long-term, expert user base.
A Call for a More Flexible Solution
I have read the update from Ahmud, the Product Manager, stating that a rollback is not planned due to positive A/B testing results. I understand that decisions are made based on broad data. However, the passionate feedback from many experienced users in the community highlights a clear divide in preference. A one-size-fits-all approach is clearly not working here.
Since you stated you are "listening closely" and will "explore ways to address the feedback," I strongly urge you to consider options that cater to different user groups, instead of forcing a single layout on everyone. For example:
A User-Level Setting: Allow individual users to choose between the "new" and "classic" position for the status button in their profile settings.
An Admin-Level Configuration: Provide project or site administrators the ability to configure the layout for their projects.
This approach would honor the findings from your A/B tests for one user segment while restoring efficiency for the other, thereby truly "addressing the feedback" you are asking for.
@Ahmud Auleear did you decide to just ignore your customers?
Some update would be in order.
My customers expect an update from me, and my job does not allow me to simply ignore them with a statement like "I am listening but not saying or doing anything".
Absolutely crazy. The status of the ticket should be static within the page and easy to update without having to scroll back up to the top. The status being in the detail section made so much sense and it isn't that I'm adverse to change but changing something that works so well just does not make any sense.
Please can you put it back Atlassian and take the feedback from us, your customers and users of the system who, from all the comments above, are not happy with the decision you have made.
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I still can't believe that "The status field was grouped with other actions, which sometimes made it tricky to find" was a reason to move the Status field. The only action it was grouped with that I have ever seen was the lightning bolt button to trigger automation rules and workflow self-transitions.
After the move it is now grouped with two actions: the Add button and the Apps button. How on earth did anyone at Atlassian come up with this as a valid reason for moving the field? It sounds like a very lame post hoc reason to justify the move.
That was just a "bonus" on top of the hypocrisy of stating that a field which scrolls off the top of the screen as soon as I brush my mouse wheel is somehow "more visible" than before.
This change to move the status is not intuitive or efficient. Users have to scroll up on the left side of the work item, instead of just the right. New users or business users could have been provided more training vs. changing functionality that was working for a bulk of the existing population. If they needed visibility into the status instead of having to update it, there could have easily been an update to reflect a read only status under the Summary.
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I know I'm just another voice in the chorus, but I can't understand how this makes anything easier.
Having to scroll to the top to change status on every single issue I'm updating is an absolute pain. I like to think of myself as a progressive PO who can roll with the changes, but I can't think of a single use case where this makes anything "easier", for literally anyone.
I can't even picture how your A/B testing could come to such a conclusion, especially to the degree that in week 1 there's a formal post stating "we aren't moving it back". Just delightful.
I don't really want to install extensions from someone else to fix this, either. But hey, it's your business and we're all trapped in the ecosystem. Good work.
This change is a huge step backward, and seeing all the comments, it's clear I'm not the only one who thinks so. It's not just that it's new, it's that the design is fundamentally flawed.
Here's the breakdown of why this is such a bad move:
The layout is just wrong. We read left-to-right, so basic usability research shows that actions belong on the right. Putting the status button on the left fights against the user's natural flow. It's just bad design.
Jira spent years training our brains where to look. This change completely breaks our muscle memory and violates the Principle of Least Astonishment. Now we have to stop and hunt for the button every single time, which is a textbook example of bad cognitive load.
In my opinion, the scrolling is the worst part. It's a total workflow killer. You scroll down to read comments for context, and the button you need is gone. Forcing users to scroll all the way back up to do their job is baffling when competitors like Asana and ClickUp solved this years ago with sticky elements.
And the claim that this was based on positive "user testing" is hard to swallow, given this massive negative reaction. Who were they testing? Not the power users who are in this tool all day, that's for sure.
The fix is simple:
Put the button back on the right.
Make it sticky so it doesn't disappear when you scroll.
This isn't just about not liking change. It's a major usability regression. Atlassian needs to listen to its actual users and fix it.
Whatever A/B & Ux testing you did was massively flawed. If you can't tell that from the massive amount of pushback on this issue then you have completely lost sight of who your users are. If this sort of garbage of "We aren’t rolling this change back" mean you are lost in your own echo chamber of corporate nonsense and I will hope that all of the users that have a problem with this will advocate to their leadership to speak with our wallets and find another solution. If your sales and profits tank because of this then you might finally realize how shortsighted and disconnected you are from your users. We want solutions not doubling down and deflection.
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Hey y'all - I've written a post right over here in the Community detailing exactly why the change to the location of the Status field doesn't bother me, and actually delights me, but I've also asked to learn from all of you why you use the Status field the way you do, and why the change breaks things for you.
For example, some folks have said they're manually updating hundreds of work items, and the change to where the Status field is makes that worse. But why are you manually updating hundreds of work items?
People have said that they are updating a work item after they read all the comments on a work item, and it bothers them to have to scroll back up. Why are you reading all the comments on a work item and then changing the status? What causes you to have to do that?
I hope you'll come and share your thoughts with me. I don't know if this change will be reverted, but if it won't be, I'd like to help folks find alternate and more effective workflows if they exist!
Myself and all of our uses to not like this change. Does that count for anything Atlassian? Please, at the very least, give your paying customers the option to choose the location of the status filed, just like almost very other field in the view.
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Great update, this is definitely a step forward in improving usability for status transitions 👏
However, I believe self-transitions deserve similar attention. Currently, they’re tucked away under the small automation icon, which isn’t very intuitive for end users. It would be great to see a more visible and consistent placement for self-transitions, just like other workflow actions making it easier and more discoverable for teams who rely heavily on those transitions for their daily operations.
In case this is really causing problems, I'd suggest opening a support ticket with Atlassian as this is something that is probably better monitored in regards to KPIs, how well a change is doing..
@Tobias Viehweger "In case this is really causing problems, I'd suggest opening a support ticket with Atlassian as this is something that is probably better monitored in regards to KPIs, how well a change is doing.."
There is one already and it seems it may be a record holder regarding how fast it gets upvoted
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