How to restrict type of issue that can enter a work flow (and a board)

[Brieuc Desoutter]

Hi,

My team receives epics and stories and we break them down in tasks (and sub-tasks) as needed.

I would like to restrict the type of issues that can enter the TO DO status of my scrum board to task, subtask and bugs but not story and epic.

I have edited the workflow with the todo, in progress and done status to only apply to these types of issues but I can still drag stories from the backlog to the to do colum of a sprint.

So to summarize:

• I enter epics and stories I receive from stakeholders and PO
• we break them down into tasks
• Creating a sprint from the backlog I only want tasks, sub-tasks and bugs to enter the TODO column of the sprint, (bonus: flatten epic and stories selected by dragging the line down to only include tasks)

Please give advise on how to do that.

Can I at least add a rule that if a user drag a story from TODO to in progress, at warning is displayed ?

thanks

Brieuc

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

There's two parts to this:

First: The to-do column on the board is a collection of status (often only a single status).  To stop an issue from being put into a column, you need to stop the users moving the issue into a status that is in the column.

I make that point because you might have more than one status in the column, so whatever you do to stop the users putting something into one, they'll still be able to use the column if the other status is available.  If, for example, your to-do column contains status "new" and "open", and you block access to "new" for Epics, the users will still be able to drop an Epic into the to-do column because they can still use "open".

Second, and probably more important - you can give issue types different workflows  The easiest way to stop people putting an issue into the wrong status is simply not have it in the workflow for that issue type!

[Brieuc Desoutter]

Hi Nic,

thanks for your answer.  I like the second point and I think I tried to do that when editing the workflow: I saw a list of type of issues and remove epic and stories.

Yet it looks like I still can add stories into my workflow.

Could you elaborate or send some pointer on how to configure the collection of status of the todo column ? Please...

Thanks anyway. That was helpful.

Brieuc

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

To implement the second thing (different workflows for different issue types), look to the "workflow scheme" - this tells a project what workflows to use for the issue types within it.

On the board, you should go to "configure board" (the ... at the top right) and then select the columns option - this will land you in a screen where you can drag the various status you have into the columns (and, of course, add, remove and re-arrange columns)

[Brieuc Desoutter]

Hi Nic,

So here are my workflows:

The 1st one relates to tasks, bugs and subtasks, the second one to epic and stories.

So stories keep showing in my board because they are created in 'TO ANALYSE' status which is assigned to the TO DO column. Right ?

If I put back all the epic and story statuses to the Unassigned statuses box on the left, stories wont show up anymore in the board, correct ?

Now, when I create a "child issue" in my stories (issue type is sub-task) and then add the story in a sprint, I still don't see the sub-tasks on the board...  shouldn't they be visible as per the first workflow ?

Thanks for your help

Regards

Brieuc

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Yes, issues in the status you've collected together in a column appear in that column.