Alternative to kanban release

Jordan McCrary

I've found the Kanban view (with the epics panel) to be the easiest way for us to manage our website build projects. 

Is there an alternative to a Kanban "Release" ? 
We don't version our websites & doing so just seems to create confusion with the team. 

I want to manually clear the "Done" column - I've searched around and found solutions such as setting it to only show tasks "Updated in last X days" - but that doesn't work for us either. 

In some cases, we work with government organizations - and they move very, very slowly. 
So a release might happen week to week, or we may do 2-3 tasks, wait a month, do another 2-3 tasks.

Furthermore, I tried just doing "releases" on a few projects, but I'm now getting an error "There are no issues to release" - but, the only issues on the board are "Resolution: Done; Status: Done" - so why are those not releasable?  

I love Jira, but the overly complicated screens, fields, workflows, transitions, schema setup is amazingly frustrating for a small team that needs to add a status or transition without spending 2 hours making sure it's on all the right screens, appears in the right transitions, has the right conditions, etc (is there an add-on that helps manage this? I have old projects that I can't change to a new workflow because of any number of errors - some unidentified task that's assigned somewhere, or has a certain label, or is just being difficult)

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

The "version" thing is a very Kanban thing to do, but it does not quite suit you as you're using the board.

I have a feeling you have misunderstood the "release" process.  This takes everything that matches your definition of "done" and sticks a Jira version on it.  The board then ignores it because the default board config has a "sub-filter" that says "ignore released stuff".

It is important to understand that Jira does not understand human "definitions of done", it relies on humans sticking "done" stuff in the far right-hand column to tell it they are done.

So,

There's all sorts of things you might do to automate, change, or bastardise this behaviour, but I would take the path of least resistance and go with it as it is.

• Use the default "version is empty" sub-filter, letting things flow into the "done" column as intended off-the shelf.
• Use the release button when you're tired of a full column.
• Use an arbitrary version - today's date is ideal if you don't need to clear the column more than once a day.
• Educate your users that this is what you are doing