This misguided, ill-thought out change hit my site today. And my users are NOT happy.
This change makes it neither 'easier' nor 'faster' to find the crucial STATUS field.
I despair of what kind of users you're finding for your so-called 'extensive testing'.
If SOME users couldn't find the very clear Status field, then yeah, make the position configurable for them, but don't break it for the rest of us (penalise the majority to pander to a minority...). And who are these users - none of them ever seem to have a presence/voice in your forums? Alternatively, if you insist on defaulting a valuable field so it is pretty much hidden - then let us be adults and configure our own screens back to a usable layout (on behalf of all admins - thanks for the extra work...). If a ticket is in a 'To Do' status category the grey colouring makes it even less obvious in it's new location. And like many others, as soon as I scroll down it's gone completely from the screen (so NOT easier; NOT faster).
In the right hand pane we amend status/assignee/sprint/story points etc at the same time - the Description rarely gets updated simultaneously - so why move status away from other fields that it logically belongs with?
Unless you have a Jira fully populated with single line descriptions; no attachments; no screenshots; no figma designs; no comments this change does NOT work (do you people even use your own product??)
Atlassian would do well to actually LISTEN to comments and feedback on these articles and forums rather than the trite 'yeah we hear you, but actually we don't care, we're still going to make the changes anyway' - but yeah, use the amount of changes - that most people don't want (as opposed to the multitude of highly desirable tickets on your backlog that you keep ignoring) - as your excuse to put the price up even higher.
And per other contributors to the discussion - I'm writing this on behalf of all the users we support, so this is not a single opinion - in my instance this equates to up to 400 users
The fact that the associated ticket to undo your mess already has nearly 600 votes in less than a fortnight speaks volumes regarding how many people disagree with your delusional opinion that this change is in any way 'easier'!
It really is time Atlassian actually listened to - and acted on! - feedback in these forums. Studiously ignoring everything you're being told/reading is NOT listening!
This is unfortunate for the user experience as we use Checklists to allow us to track 'stage gate' approvals that relate closely to the Status of a work item. Before it was quite simple to look at the progress of the checklist on the left and relate it to the Status on the right that remained visible as long as the right-hand side did not scroll down. Now for every work item we must scroll down-up-down-up to ensure the checklist is in sync with the status.
The ideal solution would be to display the status up in the static area... next to the breadcrumb trail
Nothing about this change is positive. Except for comments, all the action items for me in Jira are on the right-side panel, and it was easy to make all the necessary changes in one sweep. Now I have to move allllll the wayyyy to the left just for the status change - that is, if I will remember to change it at all, since it's hidden from my view, should I scroll even a tad bit down.
Has anyone tested this change with an issue that has multiple comments and sub-comments, screenshots and lengthy descriptions? That's a largely rhetorical question, as the sheer amount of scrolling needed to change the status after reviewing the comments is excessive and frankly extremely annoying.
We’re currently affected by this change and clearly notice the rollout in our environment today; and the response from our users is not positive. After posting a comment, you now have to scroll all the way back up through the thread just to update the status?!? That’s frustrating and inefficient.
I’d be very interested to know how much user testing was done here and how thorough it really was.
I do understand the intent to simplify the Atlassian UI, it's a complex maze of config screens and portals over the past few years, but this particular change feels like a significant step backwards.
Please give us the option to restore the functionality to where it previously worked.
@Ahmud Auleear Hello. I wanted to share a few thoughts on this change.
From your reasoning, it seems like the needs of newer users (many of whom may just need more training on the tool) or leadership (who may not use Jira for more in-depth project work) might have been a key focus for this roll-out.
However, for those of us who work heavily in Jira and rely on detailed notes in the 'Description' field, the new layout adds quite a bit of friction. Specifically, having to scroll all the way back to the top just to change the status can really interrupt the workflow.
I can also assume from this decision that the visual design may have been optimized with this change more for users who are primarily just viewing Stories or Epics and leaving the page, rather than those actively building them, communicating in them, and managing them.
It would be great to find a balance that supports both use cases, and I really hope you reconsider your decision on keeping this as-is.
After a week of suffering through this change, I broke off from my daily tasks to add this CSS via the Stylus extension to peg the status dropdown to the top of the task box where it's accessible no matter what part of the ticket or meta information you're in at the time.
Personally, I believe this is a better change to the layout than it was before the update even.
Stylus exists as an extension for all major browsers.
Setting the location to "URLs on the domain" to atlassian.net covers all cases I've found thus far without affecting any other elements.
This is a TERRIBLE change and i Highly doubt that any user groups who ACTUALLY use Jira were consulted
The transition issue dropdown is one of the MOST OFTEN USED features in Jira, and due to your change, the user MUST scroll to the top of the ticket EVERY TIME he/she wants to transition the issue. This is killing us.
PLEASE move it back to the TOP RIGHT under pinned fields, where it will ALWAYS be visible and easy to access.
Your change accomplished NOTHING in terms of making the field easier to find- in fact you made it MUCH HARDER.
@Ahmud Auleear , a bit of an FYI about your statement "We aren’t rolling this change back, but we are listening closely. We’ll continue to explore ways to address the feedback you’re sharing here, so please keep it coming. It genuinely helps us understand the impact from your perspective."
Particular this part "we aren't rolling this change back" kills all sense of dialogue?
Is the purpose of this discussion group just to write down our frustrations? Just so Atlassian is informed about the impact we get from (in our case several 100) users?
Somehow this comes over too absolute, even a bit aggressive, towards each person who asks here for a solution. I'm sure there are good intensions so I wanted to share this input.
And just to let you know that the Community Champions are having a very animated discussion on our internal slack and are doing everything we can to escalate it internally to Atlassian.
Outside of this being a poor decision and implementation (very limited communication of this change), why was this seemingly done for Jira and not Jira Service Management? The inconsistency is painful.
I also think the change is bad. The status field belongs with the other fields that are found in the context area of the issue!!!
Additional confusion – the change currently only affects Jira, but not Jira Service Management!!! Will it be implemented there as well? For users who work with both products, this is completely confusing!
This seems like such an unnecessary change? Why would a ticket Status randomly be underneath the ticket Summary/Title vs in the Details with the rest of the context fields?
Or at least provide us the option to decide where we would like for it to live :)
If you are scrolling through a ticket, you can't quickly reference it on the side panel, but have to scroll all the way back up to see it, as it gets hidden with a scroll right away.
And everything with the UI is being shifted heavy on the left side of tickets and product now. There's no balance.
Yesterday I fielded a call from the CEO asking what I'd done to Jira so he couldn't see the status of a work item whilst looking at the comments.
Today I've been given a requirement from operations to add in a new field at the top of the right panel that mirrors the work items status, and to add in a manual automation to change the status from the right side; they're not happy with that, but living with one extra click to get a list of manual automations is better than having to scroll to the top of the page they're looking at comments on. Oh and I need to update all the company documentation to explain this change.
I'm not going to bother echoing everyone else's comments, but @Ahmud Auleear why didn't you listen to the community? We're the ones who use Jira. We're the ones who take time to help other users. We're the ones who voluntarily give you mostly constructive feedback.
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What was the big rush to deploy this change without making it a configurable setting? I can't fathom anything which would make it that urgent. I know it's unrealistic to make every display option available at the user level but at least make it configurable at the global level.
Even though I warned my user base a month ago that this was coming it still hasn't hit our instance and I am dreading the day it does even though I warned them again today with a pointer to this article.
So far, 9 pages of comments for this particular (peculiar) change (it rolled out today for many more orgs including mine, so give it time and it will increase, no doubt)
25 comments per page, none of them seem positive
Each (1) comment usually represents 1 site org admin who advocates for dozens/hundreds/thousands of users that don't seem to be happy with the change
In the most positive scenario we get 9 (pages) * 25 (comments) * 50 (users per admin) = more than 11 thousand users impacted
In reality this is likely more than 11k, so let's say somewhere between 10 thousand and 100 thousand users may be negatively impacted
All we got from Atlassian, end of last week, is "we're not rolling it back, but..."
How many downvotes/comments would be needed to roll this back / provide an option to have the status field back in it's original position? What if we make a petition and get signatures, would that help?
I write this somewhat jokingly, but there's usually truth in a joke, and it is the case here as well.
Lastly, we get spammed a lot in Jira and Confluence, about new features, and there's no way to stop this. Each time you'll have to 'take the tour' or 'dismiss' the pop-up, no matter how experienced or knowledgeable you are. Yet, for this so-called 'easier status updates' change, there is no such pop-up to inform users the field has moved. Why not? Now, we admins still have to deal with the questions and the communication to users, and there is no in-app notification we can make other than using the announcement banner, which seems like overkill for this.
Maybe this is a good time to introduce a feature that allows admins to create a notification about any part of the screen, like those pesky pop-ups only Atlassian can push now?!
I have been using Jira for the better part of the last 20 years and I cannot believe that Atlassian figured this was a rational and acceptable UI change. This is the worst UI design change I've ever seen happen, and you guys have overhauled things over and over.
Whichever focus group and A/B test you performed gave you garbage results. This is a terrible design choice, it forces the users to scroll needlessly any time an issue needs to be transitioned; whoever gave approval for this choice should get a second look.
To the community managers and engagement officers: please provide the feedback of your ACTUAL USERS to the development team.
Please for the love of everything good and normal and decent in the Atlassian products, reverse this absolutely terrible irrational bull-headed design change.
Thousands and thousands of impacted users are being represented in this complaint thread, and yet the Jira team continues to grandstand with the opening statement of “we aren’t rolling this change back.” This is wasting our time in yet another way - right here.
@Ahmud Auleear, are you actually even reviewing this feedback, or do you not even bother? As a Product Manager, are you sharing this powerful feedback with the (awful) designer responsible for this rollout? Are they still standing by the decision not to revert the change?
Can someone - anyone - show us some respect by engaging with the comments here?
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This decision was based on extensive user testing across a wide range of Jira users: new and long term, technical and non technical. The results were clear, and when we followed up with an A/B test, we saw statistically significant improvements that gave us confidence to move forward.
I'm sorry to be blunt but: you need to expand on this a lot. Atlassian has trotted this exact excuse out to defend all sorts of abominations, and I have come to sincerely question whether Atlassian understands what "user experience" is at all. What prompted you to look at this in the first place? What was your A\B test? What were the results?
Pulling back even bigger picture, and I will say this as bluntly and clearly as I can because the message seems to keep getting lost:
The pace of changes in the Atlassian tool suite, particularly when it comes to the UI, is wildly excessive. People cannot keep up, and at this point you have a large body of users who will not accept ANY change you make because they are simply fed up.
“We hear you but we keep moving forward with our decisions regardless” You know what I did with the buttons I needed to track? I pinned them to the top of my sidebar. THAT’S how you deal with “I can’t find it”…ALLOW USERS TO CUSTOMIZE THEIR WORKSPACE INSTEAD OF FORCING ONE WAY ON EVERYONE. And while we’re on the subject why on earth is the log time option buried in the dropdown menu when literally logging time is one of the most integral aspects of this software. Not looking forward to your next UI changes whatsoever.
This has been incredibly disruptive. We have multiple projects across our instance that hold large amounts of comments and information and users have to continuously navigate back to the top of the screen to review the current status or transition the item. Allowing the status bar to float or allowing admins to control the status location within issue layout is an absolute must
This change just hit our tenant today as well and it's the second time in as many weeks that Atlassian has significantly moved our cheese. The first being the change to business projects that consolidated workflows...another amazingly disruptive change.
I'm not sure what's going on over there, but you're making changes under the guise of "improvements" that have us considering migrating off of the entire Atlassian suite.
This change, in particular, wouldn't be so inconvenient if the button was staticly positioned and didn't scroll its way into oblivion, especially on high traffic issues with hundreds of comments. It was perfect where it was...and it makes me wonder if by "extensive user testing," you mean you flipped a coin.
It's unfortunate that you say you're listening but then do nothing for the users that have issues with changes like this...if you're truly listening, make this stuff configurable.
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