Issues in progress marked as resolved

[Larkin Rogers]

Hello Jira community, I need your help. I have a project with multiple Kanban boards and 2 sprint boards.  Issues in the ENG board work as expected and are not resolved while in to do/in progress columns, but issues in the other sprint board, the DS board, are all labeled in the sprint as resolved on the burn up report, even those in IN PROGRESS statuses.  This is not the case with the ENG sprint burn up report.  all the boards use the same workflow scheme.  Does any one know what is going on? Here is a clip of the sprint workflows with the workflows associated with the sprint boards circled.  Thanks for the help.  Comments on the best practice of how this is set up are welcome as well.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

As well as what Trudy says, there's a common mistake that inexperienced Jira admins make - they put the resolution field on a create or edit screen.  This means when a user creates or edits an issue, they will set the resolution (even if they don't touch the field, it will get set to something, which tells Jira the issue is resolved)

Check that the only place you have a resolution field is on a transition screen used in transitions where you are closing an issue.  (It's ok on issue view screens as well, but you don't need it on them)

[Larkin Rogers]

Thanks Trudy and Nic, I really appreciate the guidance. Some follow up:

"An issue is generally considered resolved when the Resolution field has a value"  Can you elaborate on this?  Where do I see the resolution field?

can you point me to what you mean by setting the resolution during transitions?  

I wondered about how jira handled resolutions when moving from a resolved field back into an in progress state, thanks for highlighting that.

Nic, I am not sure I completely understand your comment, but I think I will when I understand Trudy's comments better. Thanks

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

The resolution field appears on all issues automatically.  It's a system field like summary, description, assignee etc.  You don't have to have it on-screen and it can be hidden, but there's not a lot of point in doing so, as it's such an important field.

• "setting the resolution during transitions"
• I'm not sure there's another good way to put that.  It literally is "Look at the transition from (say) 'in development' to 'done' and you want to set a resolution during that transition"
• To do that, you need to do one of these three things:
  • Have a post-function on the transition that sets it
  • Pop a screen for the user that includes the resolution field
  • Some types of config do not directly let you edit the workflow - for these, there is a tick-box on a column that says "this is the done column", which quietly sets and unsets it for you (Next-gen projects)

My comment is about where the resolution field is set.  If you put it on a screen that is going to change the issue, the resolution will be set - you cannot leave it blank.  So if someone edits an issue using a screen with resolution, they will inadvertently resolve the issue.

[Trudy Claspill]

@Larkin Rogers 

Based on the image of the workflow diagram you posted, I'm leaping to the conclusion that you are using a Classic project (not a Next-Gen project).

Issue statuses that show in a green block, like DS-QA APPROVED, are generally assigned to the "Done" Status Category. You can see that for sure by going to the Statuses admin page at <yourJiraURL>/secure/admin/ViewStatuses.jspa, finding the Status in the Name column, and then looking at the Category column.

Green/Done statuses typically have a post-function in the workflow transition to set the Resolution field. If you are in Edit mode for a workflow, click on a transition arrow that points to one of those Green/Done transitions. That will pop up a summary of the transition, as shown in this image.

If you then click on the Post Functions link in that pop-up, that will show you all the functions that occur after the status of the issue has been changed. In the example image below I've put a square around the function that sets the Resolution field. I've pointed an arrow at the icon to click to edit that specific post function.

If you want to make sure the field is cleared if the issue transitions back to a to-do/in-progress status, then on each transition that goes from a "done" status to a to-do/in-progress status you need to add a post function to clear the Resolution field, which looks like this:

For a given issue, if you are using the classic JIRA issue view you will see the Resolution field directly below the Status field.

If you are using the New JIRA Issue View, the value of the Resolution field will show right next to the Status field, here where it shows the green check mark and says "Done" in gray text.

If the Resolution field has no value then you would not see anything to the right of the Done button (the green button with white text).

I hope that provides additional clarity.

[Trudy Claspill]

An issue is generally considered resolved when the Resolution field has a value. When it has no value, it will show as Unresolved. When it has any value, regardless of the value, then JIRA considers the issue Resolved.

The Resolution field is typically set in the workflow in the Post Function section of transitions to "done/closed" types of statuses, and the out of the box workflows are preset to do that.

If you have customized the workflow, which clearly has been done, you need to check the workflow transitions to "done/closed" type statuses to make sure they are setting the Resolution field during those transitions.

Additionally, if you allow issues to be transitioned from a "done/closed" status back to a "to-do/in-progress" status, those workflow transitions need to include a Post Function to clear the Resolution field. Otherwise, they will retain a value in the Resolution field and JIRA will still consider them resolved, even when they are in a to-do/in-progress status.