I've got no items on my backlog and it's driving me crazy!

Nick Cox October 9, 2013

HI, I've just trying out Jira and I've created a project, and an issue. I would like to assign the issue to a sprint on my board, but there are no items on the backlog, I was expecting to see the issues there and be able to drag them onto the sprint. I've looked and cannont find anywhere that tells me how to get items on the backlog! I am sure I am missing something simple but can't work it out!

Nick

4 answers

1 vote
Kim Poulsen
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October 9, 2013

From your description is is quite hard to say anything sensible about what could be wrong.

The flow goes like this however:

1. Create project
2. Create (some) issues
3. Create a scrum/kanban board using the project as filter content

Now the possible reasons that I know of:

If you find nothing in your backlog it is likely that your filter is not resolving to include any of your issues.

If your issue is closed it is not shown on the backlog only issues not closed are shown there.

If your issue is a subtask type it is not shown on the backlog.

If you don't have a backlog you are using a Kanban board.

If you have a status on the issue which is not mapped on the board it is not shown. I see this often with users on Simplified workflows.

You can check your filter using the issue tab or by going through the configure page on the board. See what turns up there.

I hope you can use this.

Dale Richards February 7, 2017

Thank you for this answer. It helped me with a similar issue. I deleted my old board, which somehow had a disconnect with my project, created a new board for the project, and all my user stories are now visible and can be added to sprints.

Kim Poulsen
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February 7, 2017

Thanks Dale. I'm happy my old answer can still help smile

0 votes
Florin Manaila
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October 10, 2013

What workflow did you use for the project? I also came across this when not all statuses of the workflow were associated with one of the columns (To Do, In Progress, Done). Check your board configuration under "Columns" (if i remember correctly) and see if any of the statuses are not associated to a column.

0 votes
Nick Cox October 10, 2013

Thanks for the feedback, I still don't get it! I don't think I'm trying to be too clever, I'm using the cloud service and I've created a project, Created an issue and I'm using the Scrum board set up. I can see a backlog and I've created a sprint, but there are no items in either. I've checked the filters and can't really see anything wrong there. If I go into the filter for the board I see my issue, but I can't get it onto the backlog. I'm sure it can't be this hard to make it work, I keep thinking I'm doing something daft!

0 votes
petry
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October 9, 2013

Hi Nick,

This usually occurs when we install JIRA Agile and don't re-index the JIRA instance after that. Please double check if after re-index your instance the issue appears.

Also, if you go to the board configuration, check if in the "Columns" tab the issue count is correct, I mean, if in the "Open" status you have one issue.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,

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