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Two statuses "To Do" and "To-Do" are causing confusion - can I delete one?

Grayson Bishop

In our Jira instance we have two statuses- "To Do" and "To-Do"- that we have been using for a long time without any administrative oversight. However, the duplicative similar names has caused a lot of confusion \and we want to delete one of them and stick with only one. As our IT team has researched this it appears that each of these fields is a system default that we can't delete.

"To Do" seems to be the default for the Software Simplified Workflow feature we use often (see https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftwarecloud/using-the-simplified-workflow-764478004.html\).

"To-Do" seems to be the default, non-editable "jira" system workflow (see image: Jira Default Workflow.png ).

My question is:
1) are both of these true, non-editable system defaults?
2) if we want to delete one and move everything to the other, can we?
3) if we can't delete either, can we make one unusable such that it appears to the end-user like there's only one? I'm guessing we'd have to somehow manipulate the "Software Simplified" workflow for scrum boards, or never use that feature, or else just live with their being two different statuses?
4) Has anyone else ever had an issue with this?

Accepted answers

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

No, one of them has been added by someone. Although they might both be new - you can rename the default status to something else. I tend to avoid doing that though.
Yes. As you say, edit the workflows that use the one you don't want, swapping them to the one you want to keep, then delete the unwanted one
Shouldn't need to, as above, but that is another good option. You can remove all the transitions into an unwanted status, then no-one can put issues in that status
Yes, most of us have. I've cleaned up Jira systems that have had over a thousand status, mostly slight and pointless variants on maybe 40-50 valid ones.

One trick you might want to think about - go to the plain list of status in Admin -> Issues -> status, and hover the cursor over the "edit" link for them. In the url that pops up, you'll see an "id=xxxxxx". This can help you work out what the "system" default status are. In plain Jira, ids 1-6 are the original Jira, and added status usually start at 10000. If you installed Jira Software before adding your own new status, it will have taken 10000 and 10001 for "To Do" and "Done". This might not be true for your system, but those numbers might help you work out exactly which one is the default "to do"

All comments

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

No, one of them has been added by someone. Although they might both be new - you can rename the default status to something else. I tend to avoid doing that though.
Yes. As you say, edit the workflows that use the one you don't want, swapping them to the one you want to keep, then delete the unwanted one
Shouldn't need to, as above, but that is another good option. You can remove all the transitions into an unwanted status, then no-one can put issues in that status
Yes, most of us have. I've cleaned up Jira systems that have had over a thousand status, mostly slight and pointless variants on maybe 40-50 valid ones.

Grayson Bishop

Thank you Nic! Really helpful, and when I hovered over "To Do"'s edit link and found it's id # to be 10200 so it sounds like a custom column. "To-Do" is id # 1 so I know that's definitely the one I want to keep now.

However, I'm still worried about deleting this "To Do". My issue is that using the simplified workflow feature will reintroduce "To Do" into my environment after I go through the trouble of deleting it. Here's the bit from the above link that concerns me:

Concerning Jira Documentation.png

Moreover (since I know that snippet form the article is just talking about steps which are a little different from statuses) when I go to one of the Software Simplified Workflows in our instance the "To Do" status is the one that's being used! See:

Software Simplified Workflow.png

I'll admit I'm not very familiar with the Simplified workflow and how it has been used in our environment so I might be missing something here but I'm worried deleting "To Do" will either:

Break future attempts to use the simplified workflow feature; or
Be moot the next time someone creates a simplified workflow since the status will just be automatically created again.

Any advice here?

Grayson Bishop

Nic,

Some more information - when we go to change one of these Software Simplified workflows I also see a property on the all transition to the bad "To Do" that seems to be there by default, I don't know if that clears or muddies the situation:

All Transition to bad 'To Do'.png

Transition Properties to be 'To Do'.png

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

Sorry for the delay.

Yes, removing a duff "to do" will not stop it being re-introduced by a project admin later amending a simplified workflow. This is a bit of a training matter for project admins - you have to persuade them to re-use existing ones as much as possible, and, bluntly, tell them that if they don't, you will remove their duplicate ones without warning, and it will be their fault all their reports stop working.

When you simplify a workflow though, this will not create it with new "to do" status, it takes the existing ones. It's only admins adding new ones you need to be concerned with.

The property on the to-do status is for translations, which is a slight bonus over a custom status.

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