Welcome to the Early Access Program for Jira’s enhanced board and backlog!

[#1]

Note: This article is written for participants in our Early Access Program. Participation in the program has been finalized and enrolment is now closed.

Hello,

We are officially moving from Early Access to General Access. A MASSIVE thank you to those that have been able to take part and provide feedback.

Overall, the sentiment has been positive. We’ve heard great feedback for the new out-of-the-box filters, the ability to update fields directly on the backlog, and the overall feel of the UI.

Based on your feedback, we’ve identified these pain points, and are currently working to address them:

1. Drag and drop performance on backlogs with lots of issues

2. Loss in quick filters efficiency

3. Reduced ability to scan the backlog due to the alignment of the epic lozenge on the issue cards

4. Transition dropzones when moving cards between columns on the board

5. Confusion around the epic name, colour, status, and link being deprecated (see more here)

6. Discoverability of the epic and version panels

We've added FAQs below to help you understand what will happen to your specific experience over the coming weeks. Let us know if you have any further questions. 

There are also more details on General Access here.

I’m a product admin, what will happen when General Access (GA) rollout starts?

From July 17, 2023, we begin rolling out enhancements to product admins on the Free plan. Product admins can control when all users on their site get to access the new experience, up until August 19, 2023.

From July 24, 2023, we begin rolling out enhancements to product admins on the Standard and Premium plans. Product admins can control when all users on their site get to access the new experience, up until August 26, 2023.

From August 7, 2023, we begin rolling out enhancements to product admins on the Enterprise plan. Product admins can control when all users on their site get to access the new experience, up until September 2, 2023.

My organization is enrolled in release tracks. What will happen when General Access (GA) rollout starts?

From July 17, 2023, you will no longer see the enhancements (outside of your sandbox). Product admins will have the option to switch on enhancements from August 8, 2023, and it will be from August 21, 2023 for everyone else on the site.

When will the General Access (GA) rollout be complete?

Our aim is to complete the rollout by the end of September. This will give us time to respond to feedback and refine the experience further.

Why haven’t you addressed my feedback?

We’re incredibly grateful to everyone who’s participated in the EAP and given us feedback. To get this in your hands as soon as possible, we wanted to first ensure feature parity with the current experience, before refining and adding new functionality. If your feedback hasn’t been addressed, it’s likely that it’s been incorporated into requests for new features, and your feedback will be used to shape future enhancements of the board and backlog.

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[Original post from May 2023]

Hello!

You’re one of the very first to try the enhanced board and backlog in company-managed projects. Your feedback will help shape the final experience before it’s rolled out to everyone later this year.

Here’s everything you need to know while being part of the Early Access Program (EAP):

What’s new?

We recently announced a series of efficiency and performance improvements coming to company-managed boards and backlogs. Alongside a modernized look and feel, here are some of the updates we’re most excited about:

• Inline issue editing

• Improved epic and version panels

• More out-of-the-box filters

• Faster load times and smoother interactions

For more details, check out our announcement.

When can I start using the enhanced board and backlog?

The EAP kicks off on May 22, 2023 and will run for around 5 weeks.

We plan to slowly roll out enhancements to EAP participants starting on this date, so please note that it may take a few extra days for the changes to be available to you.

Once you have access, you’ll see the board and backlog actions menu expanded with a new section:

This section of the menu will remain after the EAP wraps up, but the “early access” lozenge will be removed as we enter the next stage of the rollout.

Can I switch enhancements on and off?

For the duration of the EAP, you can switch back and forth between the old and new experience.

These enhancements are applied per user, which means that no one else on your site will see these changes unless they’re also signed up for the EAP.

What feedback are we looking for?

We’re keen to hear your feedback on these aspects of the new experience:

• Usability (how easy it is to use features and complete tasks)

• Functionality (how well a feature’s capabilities meet your needs)

• Performance (how quickly features load and how smooth interactions are)

• How easy it is for you to understand what’s changed

How do I ask questions and give feedback?

You can ask our team questions and send feedback directly in-product. In the enhancements menu, simply select Give feedback. If needed, we’ll reach out for more information so we can better assist you.

[Martin]

It seems that only my personal account is a participant of the EAP, not the whole project member/company. Is this right? Is it possible to test with more people within the company?

[Michel Neeser]

@Martin That seems correct, as stated above:

These enhancements are applied per user, which means that no one else on your site will see these changes unless they’re also signed up for the EAP.

[Mike Alexander]

This has just been made available to me today. Things I love about the new implementation so far include:

1. Impeded (flagged) issues now show the priority icon (it's no longer replaced by the flag icon).
2. Epic badge left aligned so that it's next to the summary.
3. In-line editing, particularly for priority and status.

However, we use quick filters extensively and the new implementation makes things much slower due to more clicks (and often list scrolling) required to enable a quick filter. Could you have an option to keep the current implementation? Alternately, could you add an option to show a "Quick Filters panel" that would show as a column on the left (as the Version and Epic panels do), which would be a vertical list of the defined Quick Filters that you could turn on and off with a single click (as per the current implementation)?

There are also a number of bugs, but that's to be expected given this is an EAP.

[Christopher Smith]

With this update did the functionality for Convert to Sub-Task get removed from the quick menu/action menu? 


Edit: I've found out that they action menu doesn't have the option for convert to subtask. This is handled using issue type icon and selecting Sub-Tasks. 

[Marcin Radlak]

I noticed that column names lack hoover... this is problematic when using longer names

[Erin Dethlefsen]

In the Active Sprint board most Epic names no longer display on the card view. Is there a setting I can change to get them to display again?

Old view: 

New View: 

[Mike Alexander]

@Erin Dethlefsen,  I've already raised this with Atlassian via the product feedback mechanism. I assume it's a bug.

[Mark Benander]

I really like many of these updates, and I feel the product is heading in the right direction.  I'm also thrilled to see that these improvements are impacting company managed projects, as I feared that only Team Managed projects would be receiving the latest updates.

That said, which I like the Quick Filter changes which save real-estate on screen, I find it challenging when presenting to my team sometimes, because the context of which filters are applied is no longer visible on the screen anywhere.  In the past, I would leave the Quick Filters expanded, and it was simple to see that I had selected both the "Next Release" and "Bugs" filters for discussion.  This is now only achievable after a click, some scrolling, and another click, after which I must remember the context.

I have submitted via the normal product feedback mechanism as well. I'm posting here just to compare notes.

[Mike Alexander]

I fully agree with @Mark Benander; the changes to quick filters are definitely a step backwards and have a detrimental impact on usability for anyone that uses them. Please restore the ability to have all quick filters shown with the ability to quickly toggle any of them on and off with a single click.

[Mark Benander]

A further note on the new Quick Filters which is a positive in my view, is that the new Type filters behave as if they are OR'd together.  This is INCREDIBLY HELPFUL because I can select Bugs and Stories, and I will get both bugs and stories.  If I created a quick filter for Bugs and one for Stories in the past, and attempted to stack those, I would get nothing.  

This will allow me to get rid of all my "exclude bugs", "excludes tasks", etc filters, which was the way I was reverse building a list of more than one issue type on the fly.

[Juhyun Kim]

Epic filtering on Kanban is finally here! it's epic!.. i mean, it's fantistic!

[Jean-Emmanuel BANQUEY]

Hello,

I actually love this new boards display but just a question :

Is it activated for all users of my instance or only for me as I asked for it ?

I am an admin and would like to make it available to all users. Thanks

[Eoin]

Thanks @Jean-Emmanuel BANQUEY - I've added some FAQs above. It's just on for you right now. We're starting the rollout and we will take it slow - so it might be a few weeks before your users get the changes.

Cheers,

Eoin

[Eoin]

Thanks @Mark Benander @Mike Alexander ! I've attached a video above with the updated pattern. And it should get rolled out over the next few days to you. Let me know if this improves the experience for you. 

[Mike Alexander]

Hi @Eoin, thanks for taking the feedback on board on quick filters. The changes in the latest EAP release address my primary concern with the previous implementation. The icing on the cake would be a keyboard shortcut to show and hide the quick filter buttons; like "e" and "v" for the Epic and Versions panels respectively. "f" is used for find, so how about "q"?

[Syeda Shaeezah Shahud]

I have a concern about the new board settings. The workload of the sprint assignees in the old board settings is different from the new board settings. It is slightly reduced than the old one. Why is this case? attaching SS for reference. 

[Eoin]

Hi @Syeda Shaeezah Shahud thanks for the feedback. They should be identical so we're keen to understand more. Are you still encountering this problem? Would you be able to do a quick sync in the coming days https://calendly.com/eoinryan/15min Thanks

[Gregg Brown]

I have a question and some feedback.

1. I thought I saw somewhere that this change was going live and would become standard on Sept 29th. Is that still the plan? We'd like to communicate to our users an accurate date so they can plan ahead.
2. When using the enhanced view, the browser's CTRL-F feature only seems to search what's visible on the screen in the backlog. Whereas on the non-enhanced, CTRL-F will find anything on the page whether it's currently visible on screen or not. We're instructing our users to use F to get to the backlog search bar instead in the meantime, but many of our users are used to just using CTRL-F. Can we expect this functionally to return to searching the entire webpage instead of just what's visible?
3. CTRL-F seems to be returning results that are not visible. For example, if I search for a single key of a task, CTRL-F will say there are two results, but I can never view the first result. The second result is the task in the backlog list. If I open the details pane of the task, then it adds a third result.

[Gregg Brown]

@Eoin Can you please read my message above and provide a response if possible? Thanks!

[Eoin]

Hi @Gregg Brown  Thanks for the ping. The vast majority of users are now using the new board and backlog. We'll begin removing the opt-out from the end of October and progressively do this through November. We urge any user or customer who has a problem with the new board and backlog to raise a support ticket now so that we can resolve it ASAP. We're down to the last few percent of users.

The ctrl-f browser feature will not work as it did with the old board and backlog. You must use the Search Backlog/Board feature (see image below) which is the leftmost field in the filter bar. Let me know how this goes for you. Just a note that once you clear the filter we will keep focus on the topmost selected issue - in case you need to perform a ranking change to this issue.

Thanks

[Sam Spencer]

@Eoin Can you tell me when the print cards feature will be permanently removed? 

[Eoin]

Hi @Sam Spencer - as soon as the opt option is removed, this feature will no longer be available. And we have already started to do this. We expect this to take a few weeks to complete. Sorry for the inconvenience with this - I realise this will be an important feature for some although overall the usage is extremely low. And it would have needed investment to make it useful above what a browser print function can do these days. Thanks, Eoin