Move tickets from backlog to kanban board when status changes

[Paul Williams]

We are using a simple team-managed Kanban board for helpdesk level tickets. Currently we are using the backlog feature. New tickets are put into backlog, which is desired. I'm looking for a way to automatically move the tickets out of the backlog to the kanban board as soon as the status changes from New -> any other status.

I believe that the trigger "Issue transitioned" is the right things, but I cannot figure out what the correct action would be. So far, all things tried just failed.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

[Mark Segall · Accepted solution]

Hi @Paul Williams and welcome to the community!

I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean about moving from backlog to Kanban when the status changes.  Typically when you change the status, that moves it from the backlog to the Kanban.  Do you have multiple statuses mapped to the backlog? 

Maybe you can share a screenshot of your Columns and Statuses configuration.  You can locate it by navigating from the top right ellipses:

[Paul Williams]

Hi Mark! Thank you for checking on my question.
I've attached two screenshots of our project. The first one is the Columns and Statuses. As far as I'm aware, we do not have any status mapped to backlog.

The second picture shows what I want to achieve.

When I change the status of any ticket in the backlog part, I would like it to move automatically to the board part so that it becomes visible on the kanban board. This does not happen as of now.

[Mark Segall]

So, the way you'll want to handle this is:

1. Drag your first status (New Tasks, Start) to the backlog column
2. Remove the New Ticket column

This will ensure all new tickets show up in the backlog.  Then you'll be able to simply drag them up to Do-It which will have it appear on the Kanban.

[Paul Williams]

When you say "backlog column" do you mean the one with the fishing net? It reads:

Drag and drop a status here to hide it from the board and backlog. Issues with these statuses won’t be visible.

That also removed the tickets from the backlog. I'm a bit confused right now.

[Paul Williams]

I just compared with a company-managed project, and that has a backlog column indeed where you can map a status to backlog. It seems that this feature does not exist in a team-managed project. Another reason to move from team to company managed project for our Helpdesk board it seems.

[Mark Segall]

Apologies - My mind was on company managed with my response. 

So, by default the backlog is just a backlog.  New issues should arrive there and then as you drag them up to "Board", they will appear in the first column of the Kanban.  

Unfortunately, there's no way that I know of to have the To Do status automatically linked to the Backlog so that you could remove it from the Kanban view as you would in a company managed project.  For whatever reason, it's completely separate.

[Paul Williams]

Thanks again for checking and clarification. I'll thing of porting our current function of the team-managed project to a company-managed project. 

[Jacob Rose]

I have this very same problem. I don't understand why there's no action available in Jira automation for team-managed projects that would allow tickets to be transitioned automatically from the backlog to the board when they're assigned or when someone marks them as being in progress.

Right now, we often lose visibility of tickets that people are actively working on simply because they didn't go to the backlog and manually send them to the board.

It seems like needless toil to require folks to manually move backlog tickets to the board when they're taking actions that imply that a ticket is no longer backlog.

[Paul Williams]

I'd recommend to migrate to a company managed project if possible. Migration is super easy and it has no downsides if you have admin permissions on a product level. 

We never looked back tbh...

[Jacob Rose]

Hi, Paul.

Unfortunately, we don't have company-wide admin rights.

I can't understand why Atlassian would provide a workflow management product where basic functionality is inaccessible to automation when teams manage their own projects in a larger organization.

It's a bit maddening!

Jacob

[Paul Williams]

Depending on your workload and team structure, you could think about a dedicated backlog review meeting and sort your backlog. Then ask your team to work top-to-bottom and explain how to drag the tickets to the board. Or use the backlog as a supervisor planning field and tell your team to only work on what's in the board. You / the team lead would then be able to decide what's being worked on by moving work onto the board. 

That way you have a clear line of expectation for your team. They don't need to worry about what's in the backlog and you can control the workload.

Obviously this strongly depends on the work and team environment. 

I can fully understand your frustration but believe me, it is just not worth the time. Adapt, improve, overcome ;)

[Camilo Gomez]

Hi Paul, I know it's been a while but I am adding this comment in case someone else comes to this page with the same question. We now have an action in Jira to do just that:

[Daniel Sklar]

Question: Does this "Move issue to board" work for the current project that is a Kanban project? I cannot find the project in the dropdown box.

Right now, the "Create issue" automation creates the ticket in the backlog and the users never look there. I cannot seem to find a way to add a step to automatically put the ticket on the board.

This is a team-managed project.

[Jacob Rose]

Hi, @Camilo Gomez,

I'm so happy to see that this actually works. I added an automation rule on my team-based project declaring that a transition from any state to "In Progress" should move an issue to the board, and it worked!

Not only did it work for existing tickets that transition to "In Progress," but also new tickets that I start out in "In Progress" were already on the board once created (the pop-up that tells you that for an issue to be visible, it must be moved to the board still came up, but I can ignore that).

Thank you all so much for listening to our concerns and taking action to make our lives better! This will save me so many clicks.

Jacob