Announcing Priority Schemes in Jira

[#1]

Hi everyone,

We're thrilled to announce the release of Priority schemes for Jira Cloud, letting you customize priorities for your projects. This much-awaited feature has gathered significant interest, as evidenced by the numerous signups for our Early Access program. Exiting the Beta phase, we're now progressively rolling out priority schemes across all sites in the upcoming weeks.

What will be available?

By default, all the priorities you have today will be in a default priority scheme for all existing projects, and you’ll be able to continue using Jira as-is.

With the new functionality, you can:

• Add or remove priorities in the default priority scheme.

• Create your own custom priority schemes for specific projects.

• Edit or delete priority schemes.

• Manage priority schemes in Jira settings.

You can configure Priority Schemes on the Priority Schemes page via  > Issues > Priority Schemes:

Differences to Jira Server & Data Center

If you’ve recently migrated or a planning a migration from Jira Server or Data Center, there are some differences worth noting.

• Delete a priority:

  • You can't delete a priority if it’s associated with any priority scheme. You must first remove the priority from the priority scheme(s) and then delete the priority.

  • You will be able to map deleted priorities to a new priority.

• Delete a priority scheme:

  • You can't delete a priority scheme if it’s associated with any project. You must first remove the project(s) from the priority scheme and then delete the scheme.

  • If there are archived project(s), they will be moved to the default priority scheme.

• The order of priorities:

  • In the Priorities page ( > Issues > Priority), the order that you see is the order in which the priorities are shown in the priority scheme, and in the dropdown menu when a user creates or edits an issue.

  • You can change this order only from the Priorities page with the buttons.

• Modify a priority scheme:

  • If you’re updating a priority scheme with projects and priorities, and some issues use priorities that are no longer available in the projects, you will be able to map removed priorities to a new value.

• Update an issue’s priority with workflow rules:

  • If you have a workflow rule for a project to update an issue’s priority to a priority that is unavailable in the project’s priority scheme, then the priority field will not be updated when the rule is triggered.

Frequently Asked Questions

• Will the feature be only available for Jira Software projects?

  • You’ll be able to customise priorities for Jira Software, Jira Service Management and Jira Work Management projects. Jira Product Discovery projects do not make use of the Priorities field at this stage.

• Will I be able to set different priority schemes for different Issue Types in a project?

  • Similar to Jira Server, you cannot set different Priorities  for different Issue Types at this stage.

• I’m migrating from Server/Data Center, will my Priority Schemes be carried across?

  • We support migration to Jira Cloud with Jira Cloud Migration Assistant (JCMA). If you're migrating with JCMA and the EAP is enabled for your instance, you can use your priority schemes from Server/Data Center in Cloud.

• Are all the priorities included in the default priority scheme?

  • Yes. When you add a new priority, it will automatically be associated with the default priority scheme. You can edit the default priority scheme to remove priorities.

• Can I associate priority schemes with both company-managed and team-managed projects?

  • Yes, Jira admins can associate both company-managed and team-managed projects with priority schemes. 

  • For team-managed projects, the project admin can set the default priority per issue type in project settings.

• Can trashed and archived projects be associated with priority schemes?

  • You wont be able to see trashed or archived projects on the Priority Schemes page (> Issues > Priority Schemes). This means you can’t see which trashed or archived projects are associated with a priority scheme and you can’t remove or add a trashed or archived project to a priority scheme.

  • Projects that are already trashed or archived will be associated with the default priority scheme.

• Are there any limits imposed?

  • Yes, we have the following limits per instance:

    • 300 priorities

    • 300 priority schemes

    • 300 priorities in a priority scheme

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Carol Low 

I have questions related to this:

• I’m migrating from Server/Data Center, will my Priority Schemes be carried across?

  • We support migration to Jira Cloud with Jira Cloud Migration Assistant (JCMA). If you're migrating with JCMA and the EAP is enabled for your instance, you can use your priority schemes from Server/Data Center in Cloud.

1. In which version of JCMA is migration of Priority Schemes supported? The What Gets Migrated with JCMA document that is available today says that migration of Priority Schemes is not supported.
2. How do we get the EAP enabled for our instance?
3. I am currently doing test migrations to sandboxes on a Premium Trial instance. I will destroy and deploy new sandboxes repeatedly to retest the migration to a clean cloud instance. Do I have to ask for the EAP to be enabled for each new sandbox?

[Vedant Kulkarni]

Finally!!

Waiting to roll it out on my customer sites.

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Carol Low 

I have additional questions, because of these statements:

• Can trashed and archived projects be associated with priority schemes?

  • You wont be able to see trashed or archived projects on the Priority Schemes page (> Issues > Priority Schemes). This means you can’t see which trashed or archived projects are associated with a priority scheme and you can’t remove or add a trashed or archived project to a priority scheme.

  • Projects that are already trashed or archived will be associated with the default priority scheme.

If we are migrating an Archived project from DC to Cloud (using JCMA), will the migration retain the project's association to its priority scheme? 

If, in Cloud, we have a project associated to a priority scheme and we Archive it, does it retain its association to the priority scheme such that if it is restored it is still associated to the priority scheme?

[Gal Fatal]

Good news.

[Haddon Fisher]

Hey @Carol Low so excited for this! Two questions for you:

1. Has any thought been given to fixing the behavior around adding all priorities to the default scheme? I think we talked about this during the EAP but I can't find that post so just in case it's gone:

• All projects are being moved to the 'default' priority scheme
• Adding a new priority will result in that priority being automatically added to that scheme
• Team-managed projects without a default priority explicitly set for each issuetype will use what it believes is the 'middle' priority for the default. These must be set manually for each issuetype in each TMP.
• There is no discernable value in adding all new priorities to the default scheme.

This results in changes to the default priority across all TMP's as soon as you add a new status. 

2. When will we see "Priorities" in the project settings? There's an expectation that when looking at project settings, you would see a link to the priority scheme being used and an option to change it (similar to how workflows, screens, and other project-level configs work). These UX patterns should be maintained to provide consistency.

[Kristján Geir Mathiesen]

Well done!

[Ulf Johansson]

Hi @Carol Low 
Good news!
Do you have a date when you are rolling out this?
We are very eager to have this feature due to going live with a new ITSM-projecct.

/Regards Ulf