Multiple boards in Business and Team Managed Projects? You bet you can!

[#1]

One frustrating thing that many people have come across with their business projects as well as team manage projects (TMP) is that you can apparently only have a single board. And with business projects these boards are very basic and non-configurable. Many people want to use these projects but want the flexibility of the fully configurable boards.

I see this question all the time in the community and there seems to be a bit of a misunderstanding that you can’t have a fully featured kanban or scrum board on these projects. However that is not the case. The below instructions will show you how you can add one (or more) of these fully configurable boards to these projects. It is worth noting that it is not the most ideal solution but it does work. At least today it does.😉

The crux of the solution is to use your profile as the Location for the board since a Business or TMP software project will not be an available option under Location.

1. create a filter that references the Business or TMP project and any desired conditions and save it
2. go to all Boards view and select create board
3. choose either Kanban or scrum
4. select existing filter
5. enter filter, name the board and for Location choose your profile (very bottom of list)
6. save it
7. board created. Copy the URL
8. go to your TMP project and click +Add shortcut and paste the URL into web address
9. result - you have a link to your new board
10. configure the board to share as desired and any other configuration options desired.

The one con here is that the board doesn’t naturally associate to your project and appear as “the” board for the project. It won’t replace the default board but rather is a separate board and clicking the link redirects away from the project screen. However it otherwise works fine.

another possible limitation associated with ‘personal scrum boards’ is the following issue (thanks to @Bill Sheboy a for the contribution) - https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSWCLOUD-21584 

[M Amine]

Amazing article

[Bill Sheboy]

Thanks for the step-by-step, @Jack Brickey 

Another *possible* limitation/issue of this approach was in a recent community post: sprint event changes from the profile-located board may not trigger automation rules in the source projects.  My testing showed this mostly worked for sprint created and completed, so I suggested the poster contact support for assistance.  There is an open defect for Sprint Started Trigger Not Firing for Personal Boards.

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Automation-questions/Jira-Automation-Multiple-Projects-Sprint-start-end-events-Rules/qaq-p/1678990

Best regards,

Bill

[Jack Brickey]

That is very interesting @Bill Sheboy a thanks for that. If you have a reference to that post I would like to review. The behavior is quite odd for sure.

[Bill Sheboy]

My bad, @Jack Brickey as I mis-remembered the issue, which was sprint event-related.  I updated my post and added the link.

Thanks for keeping me honest.  ;^)

[Jack Brickey]

Awesome thanks! I’m going to add that issue to the article so folks don’t miss it.

[Ajay _view26_]

@Jack Brickey A very good read ... I was not aware of the trick to add boards under the profile. Now that I know will use it for my daily Scrum

[Carlos Garcia Navarro]

Thanks for creating and sharing this article, Jack! Very helpful.

[Trudy Claspill]

I have found additional limitation with this in how issues are displayed in the Backlog. I have not figured out if there are any work arounds for these issues.

In Team Managed projects issues don't use the Epic Link field, but rather store the parent Epic issue ID in the Parent field of an issue. In Company Managed projects, the Parent field is used for storing the issue ID for the parent of a Sub-task.

This causes oddities in the Backlog display.

1. Epic issues display in the backlog, in addition to displaying in the Epics pane.

2. Child issues of an Epic are not counted in the summary for the Epic displayed in the Epic Pane.

3. To see the child issues of an Epic in the Backlog list you have to expand the Epic, like you would expand an issue to see its Sub-tasks. And in the Backlog list the child issue is counted as a "sub-task" regardless of its issue type.

4. If you have an Epic with a child Story, and the Story  has a Sub-task, you won't be able to see that Sub-task in the backlog.

In the image below I have one Epic (TNS-4) with one child Story (TNS-3). That child Story (TNS-3) has a child Sub-task (TNS-9).

In the backlog list the Epic is listed and shown to have 1 sub-task. The Epic itself does not have any Sub-task issues, but has a child Story. That Story is treated like a sub-task in the list, and it does not appear in the Issue Count for the Epic in the Epic pane. I also can't expand that Story in the list to show its Sub-task.

I also have one Story (TNS-2) that is not a child of an Epic, and it has one sub-task (TNS-5).

For this Story I can expand it in the list to reveal its Sub-task, but only because the Story is not the child of an Epic.

UPDATE Sept. 21, 2022: Theses difference in display of Team Managed issues in a manually created board sounds like it is getting addressed in changes being rolled out now.

https://confluence.atlassian.com/cloud/blog/2022/09/atlassian-cloud-changes-sep-12-to-sep-19-2022

[Daniel Conway]

Quick update, it's now "+Add shortcut" instead of "+Add Item" in #8 in the article.

[Jack Brickey]

Thanks @Daniel Conway I have updated.

[Maria Malmstrom]

On step 4 when trying to select a filter, I get an error message:

"The Jira server was contacted but has returned an error response. We are unsure of the result of this operation."

Anyone else who experienced that? I've tried several times but still the same.

[Jack Brickey]

I have not run into that. If it continues contact support.

[Rehan]

Thank you for this wonderfully written article. Just so I’m in lockstep with everyone else, is the terminology Business Projects referring to Jira Work Management? If not, has anyone tested this against JWM, which does not have issue types such as Epic or Story? 

Will play with this shortly but curious before I go full into this. Having the ability to manage and view multiple boards within a company managed business project within Jira Work Management is very important to our organization. 

[Jack Brickey]

Hi @Rehan , yes JWM is for business projects.

[Scott Hendriks]

Epic, thank you!

[Rodolfo Romero - Adaptavist]

This is a great workaround. Thanks for sharing. However, the support for multiple boards in the same way as for JSW company-managed projects is a must.

[Jack Brickey]

@Rodolfo Romero - Adaptavist ,

for what it's worth I don't completely agree here. While I would agree that for CMP business projects you should be able to represent multiple projects on a single board I don't feel the same way about TMP projects. .

In my opinion team managed projects need to remain silos. They should not venture into the world of CMP where you have the capability of blending multiple projects. I say this based on the original philosophy of having both CMP and TMP coexisting. If at some time Atlassian plans to jettison the CMP in favor of TMP then yes I would agree.

[Rodolfo Romero - Adaptavist]

@Jack Brickey

If you read again my post, you will see that I didn't say "multiple projects" but "multiple boards", which is completely different to what you are describing. Boards are "views" to data stored in projects and teams should be allowed to have different views of their data. This is normal practice in the industry and many teams can get great benefits from it regardless of using CMP or TMP.

Having said that, I also think that there is value in boards that can contain information across multiple TMP. Some teams like to organize their work in separate TMP but also they want to be able to have a view (board) that aggregates the data.

The simplicity of TMP has nothing to do with the way the data is viewed. Instead, it tries to remove  the configuration complexity that CMP have.

[Stephen Watson]

There is another option but only for company-managed business projects. I use different workflows for different issue types. This then presents me with a 'Workflow' option under the three dots(more) option.

Selecting a different workflow shows the status columns for that issue type(s), but also only those issues for those issue type(s). So not ideal for some, but it is another option.

[Ravi Garg]

This was helpful, thank you for sharing!!

[Lena Sargsyan]

HI,

I am sure that the article is very useful and helpful. Just I am very new in JIra and did'nt get the point where to start from, Particularly, 1st point create a filter - where to create it?  in a TMP to which I am trying to  add a board or somewhere else.  And the second one "go to all Boards view" - there is not such a view in a TMP.

1. create a filter that references the Business or TMP project and any desired conditions and save it
2. go to all Boards view and select create board

Please one more time for dummies ))) Where to start from in more details please.

Thanks in advance!

[Jack Brickey]

Hi @Lena Sargsyan ,

To create a filter try the following instructions:

1. click into the Search box in the main menu at the top of your screen
2. In the dropdown select Advanced issue search
3. In the resulting screen there will be two possible views: Basic and advanced. I would recommend starting with basic if you have no JQL experience. Once you create your filter you have an option to save it and give it a name

What do you have your filter saved you can then create a board using that filter as follows:

1. Once again click into the Search box in the main menu at the top of your screen
2. In the dropdown at the very bottom you will see a few "Go to all:" options. Select the Boards
3. And the resulting screen click create board.
4. Choose either scrum or kanban and then in the following screen choose to create a board from an existing saved filter and click Next
5. In the next screen give your board a Name, enter the name of your saved filter, and finally choose your profile for the Location

Once created, you can add a link do your board on the side bar of any desired project. 

I hope this helps clarify things a bit.

[Lena Sargsyan]

Thanks much. I am done with creating a filter and a board. Now I am about to link them, but I couldn't find out how to link them. 

"Once created, you can add a link do your board on the side bar of any desired project. "

Could you please be so kind and show me the way to do that as well?

[Trudy Claspill]

@Lena Sargsyan 

Use the Add Shortcut option.

You will need to copy the URL for the board and fill it in with this option.

[HW Goh]

Thanks for this suggestion. One other limitation I found is that, the Card Layout settings is not able to see team-managed fields. So any custom fields created in your TMP cannot be displayed on the Card layout.