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

[Jordan McCrary]

First, I appreciate your response!

But I think maybe I over/under-explained my predicament. 

I'm using the "Done" column, with 2 statuses "Done" and "Ready For Release" 
100% of tasks from our most recent set of work are in the "Done" column, and I've confirmed that the issues show "Resolution: Done" and a status of "Done" as well - so in every conceivable way, Jira is showing the tasks as completed.
To be clear, there are no tasks in any column except the done column

However, when I click "Release > New Version" it pops up an error telling me that no issues are ready for release.

I think something happened with the concept of versions for this project, because I actually had to remove the default board filter - when I created the board with default settings, it showed 0 tasks in the backlog/on the board.

I only asked about the manual release because the release/version is largely unused/unimportant to us - so if we could forgo that, it wouldn't be an issue.

I don't especially mind the release process as it is now, it just feels like overkill when we have 1 or 2 issues completed for a 30 day period, though I may work out a system where we either release weekly as part of a development cycle, OR release after 30 days if it's a slow moving client, just to manage reporting (not especially relevant to the issue of not actually being able to complete the release)

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

The only way I can think of getting it to behave like this is if your "done" column is not the far-right-hand one on the board.  Is that the case?

[Jordan McCrary]

Yep, it's in the far right column. 

We have: 

Backlog Board: 
Statuses: To Do, On Hold

In Progress: 
Statuses: In Progress, Selected For Development

Done: 
Statuses: To Release, Done

[Andy Heinzer]

How is your subfilter setup on this kanban board?   Kanban boards have an additional subfilter JQL query that can be added in order to limit what issues appear on the board at any given time.  More details in Configuring Filters : adding a subfilter.

By default this is a value of:

fixVersion in unreleasedVersions() OR fixVersion is EMPTY

In this case, this will limit the board to only show issues without a fixVersion or that have a fixVersion value set that is still unreleased.   This keeps released issues from still appearing on the board.  However if you have modified this, it's possible that the issues you see on that board already have a fixVersion and probably are not expected to appear on that board appear here because they have already been released at some point.