How to see blocked issues in backlog?

[Ajda Gruden]

Hello!

My team and I are losing a lot of time going over each and every ticket through the backlog to determine, whether the issue is still blocked by anything or not.

I changed the card layout in the backlog to include linked issues, but with that I have 2 problems:

1. The linked issues should be crossed out when they are completed, but this only works in one project (I'm linking between multiple projects):

2. This displays all linked issues, though I only need those that are blocking the issues in the backlog.

I have tried setting up a custom JQL filter, but haven't figured out how to phrase the query to filter for issues, that either fon't have any _blocking_ issues linked to it or don't have any blockers at all.

Has anybody figured out a way? For me it doesn't matter in what way it is visible which issues aren't blocked, be it by flag, filter, additional field. 

Thank you in advance!
Ajda

[Walter Buggenhout · Accepted solution]

Hi @Ajda Gruden,

Issues get struck through when there is a value filled out in the resolution field. That is Jira's way to distinguish between open and resolved issues (issues where no work must be done anymore). If your issues don't get struck through in a project, it probably means that the resolution field is not being filled out when you reach a closed status in your workflow. You should fix that in your workflow to ensure data consistency.

Second, the most common approach to marking issues as blocked is by flagging them indeed (set the flagged field to "impediment"). Simply right click the issue and choose add flag.

Blocked issues are clearly identified like this:

Hope this helps! 

[Ajda Gruden]

Thank you @Walter Buggenhout , we will use the flags.

And thank you for the tip with the resolution - I have never changed anything there, but I have been modifying the workflow a lot. I will def. look into it and hopefully no data gets lost along the way :) 

Best,
Ajda

[mauricio.groth]

Hi @Ajda Gruden

As you're on Jira Cloud, the correct answer is to get an app that provides JQL extensions you're looking for.

With standard JQL, you can only get a list of issues and export them to Excel for further processing. This works if you want to do a one-off analysis. If your use case is more dynamic than that, look beyond standard Jira.

Standard JQL doesn't easily allow it, but you can quickly find the results using our professional indexing service JQL Search Extensions

 You can use this alias to find all issues which are blocked by another issue

linkType = "is blocked by"

Or, you can use this one to find all issues which are blocking another issue

linkType = “blocks”

Check out the documentation for more examples.

If you have any other questions, please contact our support. We’ll be happy to help you!
Best regards,
Maurício

[Ajda Gruden]

Thank you for your answer, @mauricio.groth !