When to use / not use the resolution field ?

Sharon Cryan

I am new to JIRA admin tasks an am wondering what the best practice is with using the Resolution Field.

It is my understanding that an issue is either Open or Closed, based on the value of its Resolution field and this field is always Required when used.

So does that mean it should only be used when moving to a Closed type of status and not used when transitioning from one Open  status, say 'Open' to another Open  status say In  'progress' ?

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

Your instincts are completely right.

Your "used when moving to closed" and "not when moving to open" is absolutely the right thing, but I'd like to add:

• Generally, for more recent JIRA systems that classify the status with the blue/to-do, yellow/in-progress and green/done, you need to set the resolution on the way in to green status, and not on the way into blue or yellow (there are cases where the colours are not right, but it's a good starting rule)
• When going out of a green status into a blue or yellow one (reopening the issue), then you also want to clear the resolution.  Use a transition "post function" to do that (there's a standard one for it)
• If you don't want to really use resolution, you still should set and clear it, or most of the reporting in JIRA fails.  To avoid your users needing to thing, instead of putting it on "going into green" screens, you can set it in a post-function
• Finally, check your screens - you never want to put the resolution on a screen that is used for anything other than "going into a green status", or "view issue".  Because your users will then accidentally set it when they create/edit/transition