How to See that Stories are Blocked in Backlog View without Using Flags

Question

I link stories appropriately but in the backlog view, I want to be able to visually see that stories are blocked by another story based on the linked issues.  I know I can flag stories in the backlog that are blocked but I guess that makes me question why even use the Linking if you can't visually see blockers in the backlog view without also adding a flag?

Florian Bonniec · Answer

Could you use an automation to set a Flag or a value in a custom field based on Issue Link Created and remove it based on Issue link removed ? Then add this field to the card in the backlog view.

Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira · Answer

Hi @Kristin Mills

welcome to the community!

That's a tricky one - the only option that I can think of is to use Jira Automation to automatically flag an issue whenever it is blocked according to your definition. Perhaps someone else has a smarter idea.

Alternatively, if you're open to solutions from the Atlassian Marketplace, I think you'd get pretty close using the app that my team and I are working on: JXL for Jira.

JXL is a full-fledged spreadsheet/table view for your issues that allows viewing, inline-editing, sorting, and filtering by all your issue fields - including your issue's issue links - much like you’d do in e.g. Excel or Google Sheets. It also comes with a long list of advanced features, including support for conditional formatting. With conditional formatting, you can define conditions on your issues - e.g., whether or not there are blocking issue links - and if these conditions are fulfilled, set the color of either the entire issue row or a particular cell. This is how it looks in action:

In combination with some of JXL's other advanced features, such as issue grouping by any issue field(s), and ranking and moving issues between groups using drag and drop, you can build a view that is essentially a supercharged backlog view in just a couple of clicks.

Any questions just let me know,

Best,

Hannes

Kristin Mills · Answer

I use links for blocks or blocked by on the stories themselves.  What I’m asking is, on the backlog view specifically, there is no visual indicator to show whether a story is blocked or not.  From the backlog view, the only way to see that a story has dependencies is to either click the story and look at the links OR use the flag feature so it highlights the blocked stories as yellow.