Card Color

[Cornelius Shea]

How can I change the color of a card? The only options I'm getting are:

• Issue Type
• Priorities
• Assignees
• Queries

Scenario (simplified) Project has 60 tasks, with 7 deliverables. I want to color code according to deliverables. Some deliverables have 2 cards, some have 15. Regardless of the quantity, I'd like to color code individual cards based on the delliverable.

I can do this easily in Trello. I'd like to mimic that solution.

Thoughts?

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Cornelius Shea 

Welcome to the Atlassian community!

Are you trying to change the color of cards on a board, or somewhere else? I think you are looking at a board, but I'm not positive.

Is "deliverable" an issue type or a Component value or something else?

Is "deliverable" dynamic? Can more "deliverables" be added by anybody, or is addition of "deliverables" restricted?

What you want can probably be done with the Queries option, but that means creating a JQL for each "deliverable". Whenever new "deliverables" are added, another JQL would have to be added.

[Cornelius Shea]

Hello Trudy and thanks for the response. Yes, I am referring to a board. 

I'm not sure how to answer your reference to a Component Value.  What portion or element is that in a card or issue?

The deliverables are finite so, no adding from others. But, my board is merely showing a list of tasks and I want to delineate the tasks as part of a deliverable. Deliverables are not clear when you readily look at the board.

I start each card with the name of the deliverable, then continue the header of the card with a specific task for that deliverable. Most times the header description is truncated so a user can't readily recognize issues.

How can I make the Queries option work? What is a JQL?

Thanks again for reaching out.

Best regards

[Trudy Claspill]

JQL is "Jira Query Language". It is the syntax used in the Advanced Issue Search screen to select issue. You specify criteria for the issues you want to select. In plain language your criteria might be:

All issues in project "My Project" where the issue type is "Story" and the status of the issue is "To Do"

In JQL that would be

project="My Project" and issueType="Story" and status="To Do"

You can learn more about searching here:

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/search-for-issues-in-jira/

There is a lot of information there to teach you about Basic searching, where you don't need to write the JQL yourself, to learning about Advanced searching and writing JQL.

If you are new to Jira, you might also benefit from accessing the Atlassian University only and going through some of the self-paced training courses for Jira, like Jira Fundamentals.

Does your instance have Jira Administrators within your company that might be able to help you set up what you need? Otherwise we will have to go through a series of questions to find out more about your instance and help you figure out how to proceed.

There are multiple ways you might identify "deliverables". You might create additional issues that are Epic type issues. You can make other issues (your tasks) "children" of the Epic issues. An issue can be a "child" of only one Epic. And then you could create a JQL statement for each Epic to set the color of the child issues. Is Epic an issue type that is available to you when you create issues in the project?

You might use a field that is available within the issues called Components. Components is a multi-select list field. The Project Administrator can define the list of available Component values that represent each deliverable, and then you can add those values to each issue. Then you could create a JQL statement for each Component value to set the color for each issue based on the Component value assigned to the issue.

You did not say what level of access you have for Jira. Did you create the project yourself? Did somebody else create it for you? Do you know if you were made a Project Administrator for this project? The board, where you are seeing the option to set card colors, is just a way to view and manipulate issues in a project. Since you can see the Card Color option that tells me you are at least an Administrator for that Board.

[Cornelius Shea]

Wow Trudy! You are a wealth of knowledge. I've used Jira for about a year now, but it was at another company. I think their configuration was a lot less stringent than my current company. 
I will check out the Atlassian Univ for sure. 

I like the idea of creating Epics for each deliverable and assign the tasks under the respective deliverables, but would that enable me to have different colors for the tasks associated to each epic?

I created the project myself. I was made an Admin. :) 

I'll try the Epic route unless you have another idea. 

Thanks again!

[Trudy Claspill]

Yes, you could color the cards based on their parent Epics. You would have to define a color/JQL for each Epic, like this: