Help: cards stacking up in "Done" column - how can I clear them? Or, sort from newest to oldest?

[Akmal Fazleen]

My project is set up as a "Kanban backlog" in Jira, and one of the issues I have is as I transition cards to "Done" in the Kanban board, the "Done" column just keeps stacking up (see the most right-hand column in IMG1 below), and worst of all it naturally sorts itself from oldest to newest, meaning the most recently Done cards always end up at the bottom and is lost out of focus when working on the board. 

What I'd ideally like is to have just this column sorted from newest to oldest. Does anyone know how to do this?

I've also tried adding a "Issue count" constraint via Settings (see IMG2) and setting a 'max' number of issues to show, but this doesn't help because it then shows the top oldest cards.

Does anyone have any other alternatives to this problem? 

 IMG1:

IMG2:

[Warren · Accepted solution]

Hi @Akmal Fazleen

You're talking about 2 different problems :

1. The order that items appear in the Done column (and I'm assuming other columns as well)
2. All Done items stacking up in the right hand column

For 1., you will need to look at the Board filter (or sub-filter)  - I have never heard of it doing that, usually it is in priority (rank) order. Show us your filter and we may be able to suggest something.

For 2., at the top right hand side of your board is a Release button. This is used to group a number of items together via a fixVersion and once released, they will disappear from the board. You can always then go to the Releases section

to view the items that have moved off of the board

[Akmal Fazleen]

Thanks @Warren that's really helpful. 
Getting them into "Releases" and marking them as released solved the issue. The Jira board makes a lot more sense to me now. 

[Richard Meadows]

Another approach to remove items stacking up in the right hand column is to change the board query to include the below:

AND (updated > -7d OR status != Done)

This will remove items that are set to done and have not had any updates in the last 7 days.  You could obviously change this to fewer days or more days depending on how long you want to see items in the Done column.

[Akmal Fazleen]

@Erika Sa Hi Erika, tagging you here because I saw that you're an Atlassian product-manager who had answered a similar question here just earlier this month: 

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Next-gen-questions/How-to-clear-old-items-out-of-the-quot-Done-quot-column/qaq-p/852627

I don't feel like my question above is related to the post above - but do you happen to have a suggestion on how to resolve my issue? 

Thanks. 

[Erika Sa]

Hi @Akmal Fazleen, my answer to that question was specifically regarding the new next-gen project. What you're using today seems to be one of  the classic projects. For this it seems like @Warren already gave you fantastic suggestions. Please give it a try and let me know how  it goes.

Cheers,
Erika Sa
Atlassian Product Manager

[Walter Gillett]

We're also using Jira Kanban and have the same problem, namely that the Done column is showing oldest at the top and newest at the bottom. The above suggestions are useful but strike me as workarounds rather than the solution. Hoping we can still have an enhancement request to show newest at the top because that seems like the obvious desired behavior. We don't do "releases" and filtering out old stuff will help but again is just a workaround.

[Walter Gillett]

Changing the board query per Richard is helpful though, thanks Richard