Can I set the initial status of an issue for a specific board?

unknown

I have 2 boards that view a single project. On the first board, I want the initial status of stories to be the first step of the process. For the 2nd board, I want the initial status of stories created to be set to a different status than stories created on the 1st board.

Is this possible or is there a better way to do this?

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

No, but sort of.

First, you need to think in terms of boards and projects.  A project is a pile of issues, with their configuration settings.  One of these is the "workflow".  Each issue type in a project can have a different workflow.  The workflow determines what Status the issues go through.  The workflow determines the initial status of an issue, and that can't change.

A board is a view of a set of issues.  The columns on the board are one or more status.

So, while it doesn't sound right at first, there isn't actually anything to stop you from creating a workflow like "New -> Open -> In progress -> Closed", and then creating Board 1 with the first column as New and Board 2 with the first column as "Open".  It'll behave oddly when creating new issues, but it'll do the job.