Introducing Action items in Jira

[#1]

Hello Jira Community,

We’re thrilled to announce an exciting new feature coming to Jira—Action Items the end of November! Designed to help you manage simple tasks seamlessly within your issues, this feature aims to enhance your productivity by eliminating the need to create separate subtasks or navigate the complexities of Jira's issue hierarchy for every small to-do.

Why We’re Introducing Action Items

We’ve heard from many of you that while subtasks are great, they can feel overwhelming for smaller, ad-hoc tasks. Whether you’re jotting down quick follow-ups, a do-to list before you close out the epic, or collaborating with teammates in real-time, creating separate tickets isn’t always the most efficient solution. That’s where Action Items come in.

What Are Action Items?

Action Items are lightweight, checklist-style tasks embedded directly within your Jira issues. With this functionality, you’ll be able to create and manage smaller tasks in a more intuitive and less formal way. They’ll live within the description, comment, and other rich text fields.

How it works

• Users can create an Action item by “/ action Item” in any rich text field (description, comment)

• Users can create an Action item by “ [ ]”

• Action items are present in the description and comment fields

For those seeking more advanced functionality, we encourage you to explore the options offered by our Marketplace App vendors, who provide powerful checklist apps to meet your needs.

Any feedback please leave a comment,

Ahmud
Jira Product Manager 

[Tomislav Tobijas _Koios_]

Cool! I occasionally get questions about this. I'm glad that I'll be able to say this finally exists 😄

[Lukas Ortner]

Hey, cool feature

Is there any plan to be able to search it by a query? Whether it is checked or not or a specific item?

[Yatish Madhav]

Nice!!! Thanks @Ahmud Auleear - i think this might save us costs for an advanced checklist add-on that we have ...

Question: Would this be for all Jira (Software) and JSM projects? For JSM, if the Action items is in the description for eg, can both customers and agents check or un-check it? (please say yes, please say yes, please say yes, please say yes :) )

I also do not see 'Action items' under Admin > Product updates to be able to see when this is implemented on our instance. Please can you add it there so I can watch once it is avilable on our instance?

Thanks again.

[Michal Štoppl]

It sounds promising. If we find out it meets our needs, it would also be great if we could get some path on how we could safely migrate from existing 3rd party solutions (e.g. using a separate API endpoint)

[Rudy Holtkamp]

Hi @Ahmud Auleear ,

It's great to see actions items in Jira. Is it possible to create action items via Automation for Jira? And if so what would be the markup?

[Avery W_ Krouse]

Very nifty! If we use automation to drop a comment on a ticket or append it to the description field (for example, dropping in checkbox for a definition of done), and we include the brackets, will it convert itself into an action item? Or will it just show up as brackets?

[Denis Boisvert]

Happy to see that nice nifty small new features. 

People that need acceptance criteria will loves it.

[Don Erickson]

Really like this as an option. I see you tagged Jira Cloud in the article, will this be available on DC at the end of November as well?

[Erki Tammik]

Will we be able to create action items using automation?

That would be a great option, as I could then offer simple checklist templates for users without needing a checklist plugin.

[Martin Boehme]

And how can we insert action items using Automation?

The following markups do not work:

[Task]
[ Task ]
[] Task

[Bhanu Prakash]

@Ahmud Auleear , This is awesome. Looking forward to use it and see what all it can do. 

[Joerg]

Thank you!

I have been waiting for this for a long time. 

Hopefully it's useable with automation too. 

[Darryl Lee]

Oh yeah, @Martin Boehme Automation integration would be nice. I took a look at what the Audit logs show, and tried replicating it, and bah, no dice.

Automation is logging a Description with Action Items like this:

* This is an action item * This is another action item

Which... is just bullets.

The REST API reveals how it's done (hum, not sure how you'd figure out those LocalIds), but having to do this via web requests would be a lot of work:

    "description": {
      "type": "doc",
      "version": 1,
      "content": [
        {
          "type": "taskList",
          "content": [
            {
              "type": "taskItem",
              "content": [
                {
                  "type": "text",
                  "text": "This is an action item for "
                },
                {
                  "type": "mention",
                  "attrs": {
                    "id": "557058:55df3d50-d179-4d17-b747-bf1484246c4f",
                    "text": "@Darryl Lee",
                    "accessLevel": "",
                    "localId": "9086caf8-f1c0-4722-9066-cd75151783a7"
                  }
                },
                {
                  "type": "text",
                  "text": " "
                }
              ],
              "attrs": {
                "localId": "b38d5d60-7d05-4333-be61-9dab0daac3cf",
                "state": "TODO"
              }
            },
            {
              "type": "taskItem",
              "content": [
                {
                  "type": "text",
                  "text": "And one for "
                },
                {
                  "type": "mention",
                  "attrs": {
                    "id": "712020:5e51f2de-a70b-4033-bb49-06685ba05b6c",
                    "text": "@Darryl Testor",
                    "accessLevel": "",
                    "localId": "a4eb6925-eb74-4914-aebd-e10675abcfd4"
                  }
                },
                {
                  "type": "text",
                  "text": " "
                }
              ],
              "attrs": {
                "localId": "0d8d7f44-df45-4262-a2c9-c5f275913352",
                "state": "TODO"
              }
            }
          ],
          "attrs": {
            "localId": "a99cac8e-bddb-453c-827b-3e8146f320b4"
          }
        }
      ]
    },

[David Bakkers]

@Darryl Leeand @Martin Boehme 

The information on how to declare the new taskList node hasn't been published in the ADF documentation yet, but I've found that you don't need to declare valid localID parameter values for any of the nodes, either leave it empty or use any random number and all seems to work just fine.

As for doing @ mentions, as per the mention node, you just specify the user's account ID and the correct text name for that user will be auto substituted:

"description": {
            "type": "doc",
            "version": 1,
            "content": [
                {
                    "type": "taskList",
                    "content": [
                        {
                            "type": "taskItem",
                            "content": [
                                {
                                    "type": "text",
                                    "text": "Action Item 1"
                                }
                            ],
                            "attrs": {
                                "localId": "1",
                                "state": "DONE"
                            }
                        },
                        {
                            "type": "taskItem",
                            "content": [
                                {
                                    "type": "text",
                                    "text": "Action Item 2 "
                                },
                                {
                                    "type": "mention",
                                    "attrs": {
                                        "id": "557058:943a10c8-0495-4019-etcetc",
                                        "accessLevel": "",
                                        "localId": "1"
                                    }
                                },
                                {
                                    "type": "text",
                                    "text": " with a mention"
                                }
                            ],
                            "attrs": {
                                "localId": "",
                                "state": "TODO"
                            }
                        }
                    ],
                    "attrs": {
                        "localId": ""
                    }
                }
            ]
        }

I doubt Atlassian are going to back-port a wiki markdown equivalent for Action Items, but it might happen. Use ADF via the v3 endpoints for the moment.

[Yatish Madhav]

Thanks again @Ahmud Auleear 

This just got released to our instance. Loving it so far ...

1.

But :( it does not work on the portal end for customers, both for un/checking or for comments - see images (the dark mode is agent view while light mode is customer view)

As you can see, on the customer/portal view, i checked all 4 items but i refresh and it reverts back and doesnt reflect this on agent view.

Also for the comment, i start typing '[] ' but it doesnt work - though as an agent, it does.

2.

Also how can i add a comment that is prechecked? eg. [-] or [*] etc do not work. Eg copying from a text editor, etc

Please let us know once this capability is added?

Thank you

Yatish

[Apryl Harris]

The feature is not in my org's instance yet. I'll be glad when it gets there so we can utilize it. Our teams will be happy about this feature.

@Ahmud Auleear - when is this feature expected to be in all Jira (Software) Cloud instances?

[Apryl Harris]

Hi Community,

For Jira Admins (the below steps may not be the same for everyone), below is what I recommend if the Action item button does not appear in your instance(s) rich text fields. From the Jira Cloud admin cogwheel

• Click Billing → Overview → click the Jira instance three dots (i.e. ellipse) → Manage release tracks
• Click Product updates → scroll down to 11/28/2024 (Create action items in Jira issues)
• Click the title and click "View rollout schedule" to confirm when your instance(s) should have received the change
• If the date is past and you do not see the change in your instances, submit a support ticket to Atlassian. 

I submitted a support ticket this morning and the Action item icon in rich text fields magically appeared within a few minutes.

The feature seems to work nicely. My teams already love it!

[Lori Coppola]

Great feature add!!!  We use a third party app currently (free version).  

Would love to see the ability to use Automation to add a Definiton of Done checklist to every ticket!!

[Sarah Schmitt-Bär _Seibert Group_]

We’ve explored the new Action Items feature and have already added support in Templating.app. Since our app provides templates for almost everything in Jira, it made sense to include Action Items for both Issue and Description Templates as well. 

This might even serve as an alternative to Jira Automations. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out!

Cheers,

Sarah // Product Manager of Templating.app

[Ryan Gallagher]

@Yatish Madhavit looks like if you put [x] it should insert a checked action box.

[Yatish Madhav]

Thanks @Ryan Gallagher  that did it!

Just one thing, if i paste something like the below, it does not auto-populate the action list. It would be real nice :)

[] abc

[x] def

[] ghi

[] jkl

[x] mno

[Apryl Harris]

You can use Jira's AI to create a pre-populated action item list, too. 

For example, in my org's instance, we created a custom field, rich text (paragraph field) titled "Create a Checklist".

But, in any rich text field,

1. select the AI icon
2. type something like, "create a definition of done checklist"
3. the AI will create a checklist
4. for me, Jira created the checklist on the image below
   

The issue with using the AI is it is inconsistent. you likely won't get the same results, even if you type the exact same thing. It would be even more awesome if Atlassian expanded the functionality to save 'standard' checklists in Jira. Ideally, saved checklists would be able to be selected within a rich text field. Please consider it Atlassian.

[Dennis Kohl]

Thanks for adding that checkbox functionality.

Now please add the possibility to use it for Automation too. That would be awesome.

[Jennifer Choban]

@Apryl Harris It sounds like you're looking for a Checklist template. See this option.

[Jennifer Choban]

There is a  post here exploring the uses and limitations of action items. 

For advanced functionality like templates, jql search and integration with automation, consider using Checklist for Jira. You can find the full list of features here, and our team is available to answer any questions.