How to Change Card or Column Colors in Jira Team-managed Scrum Board?

Question

Hello all,

I'm currently using a Team-managed Scrum project in Jira and would like to know if there's any way to customize the card or column colors based on status (e.g., TO DO, IN PROGRESS, DONE), priority, or any custom field.

I've explored the Board settings and Columns and statuses section under Project settings, but I don't see any option related to card color customization. I understand this feature is available in Company-managed projects, where you can configure card colors by JQL or field values. However, I couldn't find a similar feature for Team-managed boards.

Here are my specific questions:

* Is there any way to enable or configure card or column colors in a Team-managed project?

* If not, is there a known workaround or plugin that provides visual distinction for statuses?

* Should I consider migrating to a Company-managed project for such customization? If so, what precautions should I take?

This feature would greatly help our team visually track progress and priority on the board.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Best regards,
Naveen

Shalini Pradhan · Answer

Hello @Gogilanaveen k ,

Good day! Welcome to Atlassian community :)

Currently, the feature to customize the card or column colors based on status, priority or custom field is only available in Company-Managed projects and cannot be implementable in Team-Managed projects. We have a feature request for the same to implement in team managed projects:

* JSWCLOUD-17277 - Custom card colors in team-managed projects

As a workaround:

* You can first create a new filter which will fetch all issues from your concerned team managed project and save it. For example: Project = ABC
* Once new filter is created, you can create a new scrum board from an existing filter and either place it in your profile or any company managed project under Location dropdown.

* By doing this, you will be able to view the board to manage the TMP issues and customise it accordingly.

You can go ahead and migrate to company managed project, if the above work around doesnt help you much. In that case, you can refer to the document, where its mentioned what all things you need to keep in mind before performing the migration.

* Migrate between team-managed and company-managed projects

Thank you!

Nikola Perisic · Answer

Welcome @Gogilanaveen k

1.Entirely to have a work item colored is not possible. However, you can customize List view format rules that are used to create the colors:

* When you click on three dots, you should have Format rules
* Format rules work based on cells and rows and you can create different rules for each cell where each color could be different - you can use the Cell and Status value

2.If you are opting to migration to the company managed project - you need to have a company managed project created first. Then you would need to bulk move the issues from team managed to company managed project.

Things to keep in mind if you migrate from team-managed to company-managed

Team-managed projects and company-managed projects are technically quite different. Here's a few things to consider when you migrate from a team-managed software project to a company-managed software project:

* Board statuses: If you customized your team-managed board, you'll need to set up the same statuses in your company-managed project's workflow. Only Jira admins can create and modify statuses and workflows. Learn more.

* Custom fields: If you use custom fields in your team-managed project, a Jira admin needs to recreate the fields and add them to screen schemes and field configurations in your company-managed project. Custom field data will need to be recreated, otherwise it will be lost.

* Work types: If you added your own work types to your team-managed project, you'll need to have a Jira admin recreate these using a work type scheme that they associate to your new company-managed project. Learn more.

* Project access: Access to company-managed projects is controlled by a permissions scheme. Only your Jira admin can update your company-managed project's permission scheme. Learn more.

* Project and work item keys: Jira will automatically update the work item keys of migrated work items to reflect their new project. Any existing links to old keys will be automatically redirected.

* Reports: Reports data won't be saved. Even though your work items will be retained, data for your project's Velocity and Burnup reports won't transfer over, and will be lost.

* Story points estimation: This data will be lost. This is because the custom field that Jira uses to store estimates in company-managed projects (Story points) is different to the custom field used in team-managed projects (Story point estimate).