Hidden To Do Status Blocks Desired Configuration

Question

I am experiencing an issue with one of our Jira workflows in the new workflow editor. There is a “To Do” status present in the workflow configuration that is not visible in the workflow diagram and cannot be accessed, transitioned to, or deleted through the UI.

This hidden status is preventing us from:

* Renaming other statuses to “To Do”
* Removing or editing the “To Do” status
* Maintaining our workflow as intended

Steps already attempted:

* Tried adding a transition to “To Do” (status does not appear as an option)
* Attempted to remove the status via the new workflow editor (not visible)
* Attempted automated and manual actions to remove the status (unsuccessful)
* Checked for the option to use the old workflow editor (not available)

Request:
Please assist in removing the hidden “To Do” status from our workflow or provide guidance on how to resolve this issue.

Trudy P Claspill · Answer

Hello @Morten Schaiffel-Nielsen

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

We are a community of users of our own Jira instances. As such we don't have any access to your instance and cannot directly help you resolve the problem.

But we can offer you advice when we understand the problem you are facing.

First can you tell us in what type of project this workflow is being used? You can get the project/space Type information from the Type column on the View All Spaces page, or by clicking on the ... next to the Space name in the navigation panel. The Type information displays at the bottom of the resulting pop-up and will be something like "Software Space" and "Team Managed".

How do you know that there is a status in the workflow that is not visible in the diagram? What are the steps you are trying to execute and the results that you see that lead you to this conclusion?

If you are

* working with a workflow for a Company Managed project, and
* you are trying to change the name of a status in that workflow to "To Do", and
* you are being told a status with that name already exists but you can't see it in that workflow

...that does not mean that there is a hidden status by that name in that workflow. For Company Managed project workflows there is a global list of all the Statuses that already exist. If there is already a Status named "To Do" in that global list, you cannot apply that name to another Status.

Here's a demo of that:

In the below picture you can see I have a workflow open on the left, and this workflow does not include a status named "Declined". On the right I am showing the global list of statuses and I have a box around one that exists already with the name "Declined".

If I click on the status on the left named "Cancelled" and try to change its name to "Declined" I get a message that such a status already exists.

Does this match your experience? Are you working with a workflow for a Company Managed project?

If this doesn't match your experience can you provide additional details such as the project type and screen images such as I showed above?

John Funk · Answer

Hi Morten - Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

Can you share a screenshot of your workflow? Also, be sure to click on the Update button to ensure any outstanding changes are recorded. Also, what type of project is this? Company-managed or Team-managed?