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

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

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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.

Roughly every 2 weeks, we’ll send a short survey in-product to understand how these changes impact your work in Jira, as well as your confidence to roll out changes to all other users on your site.

What’s next?

Once we've addressed your feedback, we'll begin rolling out enhancements to all users of company-managed projects. Every few weeks, we’ll update this article to outline the latest fixes and enhancements based on what you’ve shared with us.

You can follow the projected GA release on the cloud roadmap.

In the meantime, we look forward to hearing what you think of the enhanced Jira board and backlog!

[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.