How do I keep our In Progress and Done Tasks to keep from vanishing from the board?

[Robert]

I am very new to Jira and like the Board a lot. We have set up Tasks and as they get up for work they go into our "In Progress" column on the board, and then when they are done we move them to the "Done" column. Pretty simple and very useful. But anything that sits in the In Progress or Done column for more than a week or two vanishes from the board. We really want to keep them around until we manually delete them so that we can see the history even if it takes longer to finish a task then we thought it would. We want the Tasks that are moved to Done to stay forever to provide a history. I guess when we close out an Epic we could delete them, but I might even want to leave them around for a year or so as a history for the project. How do I configure Jira to leave Tasks in columns until they are manually deleted? I can not seem to find a way to do that. Thanks in advance for any and all help and suggestions. 

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @Robert 

Welcome to the community.

Are you working with a Team Managed project or a Company Managed project? It will say at the bottom of the navigation pane on the left.

Are you working with a Software, Service Management, or Business (Work Management) project? It will say at the top of the navigation pane on the left, below the project name.

Are you working with a Scrum board where the board displays issues that are in "Active Sprints" or a Kanban board where all issues are displayed?

If you are working with a Company Managed project, you should be able to go to the board Settings and to the General tab. Can you provide a screen image that shows the Filter used for the board, and the settings below that for Sub-filter and "Hide completed issues older than"?

[Robert]

Thanks Trudy;

I am in a Team Managed project. I am in a Software Project. I am not sure if it is a Scrum Board or a Kanban Board. I am pretty sure it is a Kanban board, but I do not see where it says which type it is. My intention was a Kanban board. 

The filters section is empty, I have not set up any filters at all. 

Are you saying that a Team Managed project can not change the lifespan of the viability of tasks? If so I will see if I can figure out how to convert it to a Company Managed board instead of Team Managed. We are a VERY small company, and I am the only person who is using Jira at all so both Company Managed and Team Managed seem like overkill for me :-). 

Thanks for any and all help you can give.

--

Robert

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Robert 

For Team Managed projects, issues in the right-most column (typically the "Done" column) will stop displaying on the board after they have been resolved for 14 or more days. This is not configurable.

The In Progress issues should not be disappearing from the board.

Can you go to the Configure Board option

...and provide a screen image of the Columns and Statuses page?

[Robert]

Does this cover what you are looking for?

[Trudy Claspill]

Yes, it does.

So, as in my last response, issues in the Done column will automatically stop displaying when they have a Resolved Date that is 14 or more days old, and that is not configurable.

Can you provide an example of an issue that is not showing in the In Progress column that you think should be? A screen image of the issue and of the board showing that the issue is absent would be helpful.

[Robert]

On the Done Column issue, that is really surprising. How do you look at any history of what was done in a project if all the stuff that is Done is gone in 14 days? Is there somewhere else you can see the stuff in the Done column or is it gone (deleted)?

On the In Progress issue I will have to test it again. Things seem to disappear after some amount of time. I will put a dummy Task into the workflow and move it to In Progress and see if it is gone after 14 or more days. I will come back to this thread if I see it vanish under a more controlled condition. The In Progress is harder to track because of course when you are done with an In Progress work item you move it to Done, and hence In Progress should never have more than a few Tasks anyway. Whereas Done should have all the Tasks that have existed since the project started. Do an empty Done column is clearly missing things, where as an empty In Progress could be just the sign that all the work got finished. What I see is sometimes I have three or four things going at once and then I come back to Jira after a few days and I could have sworn there were 4 but there are only 2. Since the Done clearly vanish, I just figured it was the same thing. Now that you tell me it should not be the case, I will test it more carefully.

Thanks

[Trudy Claspill]

The issues are not deleted. They are just not displayed in the board. This is to improve the performance of the board. The more issues displayed in the board, the longer it will take to load.

You can always go to the Issues option in the left-side navigation pane to see all the issues in your project. Or you can go Filters > Advanced Issue Search and construct a query to show you the issues you are interested in viewing; i.e. create a query to show you all issues in your project that have a Status=Done, or a query to show you all issues resolved in a time period.

Regarding things "missing" in the In Progress column, also double check if you have activated the Assignee, Epic or Label filtering features at the top of the board. Those will reduce what is shown on the board when they are activated.

[Robert]

Trudy;

You said that you can find Tasks that are no longer shown in the DONE column of the board by looking at Issues on the left side navigator. I see no Issues on that left side navigator, can you tell me where I can find it. I tried looking around and do not see it anywhere.

I have a test Task moved into the In Progress column of the board with the Date in the Task name so that it is obvious when I put it there. If it ever vanishes, I will reply to this thread. For now, I am going to assume you are right and the issue with Tasks in the In Progress column was some form of user error on my part.

Thanks Again for all your help!