Move issues to different board on transition to specific status

[Morgan_Heijdemann]

Hi everybody,

I'm currently in the process of trying to figure out how to automatically move issues from one board to another, and I'm having trouble finding a solution. To clarify let me explain why I want to move them:

Currently my company has several departments. The technical department is in charge of system administration, web development and development of the inhouse software. Right now only the technical department uses JIRA , but we want to expand to the other departments as well. One of the things that will happen a lot is that an issue will be created in the technical departments board, go through several transitions there, and on transition to for example a Test status, need to be transferred to the board of the department that requested the issue to test. At this point they'd go through their workflow and might discover something that would require it to go back to the technical board, or set it as Done there.

From what I understand moving issues automatically is a pain in the behind, but simply cloning the issue to the other board wouldn't fix the part of the process where the issue would be sent back to the first board. Then you'd have to somehow sync the two issues, and I haven't found a solution for that either.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Let's start with the flawed assumption in the question.

Issues do not "move" between boards.  Boards select issues based on the data on the issues.

This actually makes the solution for your case very simple.  You set up one board holding some of the steps in the workflow, and another board with other steps.

Let's say you have a workflow who's ideal path is

New -> in dev -> waiting for test -> in test -> done

A board for the developers should have three columns with status in them of New, in dev, and waiting for test.  A board for the testers then has waiting for test, in test and done.

[Morgan_Heijdemann]

You're correct, there's no moving between boards, I got that mixed up with projects. Of course, if I was to add an Agile board with an In Test workflow, that'd still be in the same sprint. Since it'd be a completely different department running the testing part they'd have to use both their own project and board, and then additionally use the In Testing board of my departments project. 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

You don't need to have a separate project, just have a board that shows issues in the status each team is interested in and not the ones they don't care about.

[Stephanie Barlow]

hi Nic!  I have a similar situation as Morgan.  

we have a dev/QA workflow on our board that goes as follows

To Do > In Development > Ready for Review > Review in Progress > Ready for QA > QA in Progress > Waiting for Acceptance > Done

Right now our 'Done' column means that it is Developer/QA 'Done' and Product Owner has 'accepted it as meeting requirements'.  This means we are ready to send the product to our Implementations Managers to give to our external clients for approval.

What I am needing is a way for those 'Done' stories to show on another board that the Implementation Managers can use to track their progress with the client and notify IT department that it can be moved to production. 

Any suggestions?  Can I just set up a new board that pulls the 'done' stories and show them there?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Yes, you can create a new board, where "done" for the developers means "ready for implementation" for the clients and implementation managers.

[Stephanie Barlow]

perfect!  Thanks Nic!  Then do I just add new statuses to the 'new board' for the implementation managers or do I need to add onto the workflow?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

They need to go into the workflow, because you can't get to them if they are not.

You won't be able to use them on the boards until they're actually available

[Stephanie Barlow]

got it. Thank you.

[Rohit Rao]

@Stephanie Barlow How did you handle this in the workflow? I'm in a similar situation where 'Done' for Developers in one board means 'Ready for QA'  on the QA board (we run separate Dev and QA sprints)

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Have a read of the original answer above - the last two paragraphs answer you.

[Rohit Rao]

@Nic Brough -Adaptavist- I was not specific in my question - I was looking for steps on creating such a workflow. I realized after I posted my question that  I did not have admin rights and was not able to edit workflows. I'm getting that set and should be able to experiment.

[Marianne Miller]

you can only display issues that have a status in your query, so if you're filtering for done, you're not going to get any of the issues in those other states.  A broad query is a good place to start, and you can use the board to aggregate or (ignore) anything that isn't relevant.

You can try it a few different ways.  if you Agile and running Sprints, you can view all the items that in the current Sprint

project = XXX AND Sprint in openSprints() 

If you're just trying to display the current state of all statuses, something like this will work

project = XXX AND issuetype in ("IT Story", "IT Bug", Task) ORDER BY Rank ASC

or a combination of both 

project = XXX AND Sprint in openSprints() AND issuetype in ("IT Story", "IT Bug", Task) ORDER BY Rank ASC

This way all the issues are present and fall into the natural queues/columns based on the status matching what you set.  When you use a broad query like this, you will have all the available options available for your columns and can use whichever you need, or combine multiple into one column to suit your definitions.

Hope this helps.

[Tami Edwards]

Question: I have a new Kanban board that has a query of  issues in the "Done" state from the Scrum board... the Kanban board is to track the testing flow of previously moved to Done user stories from earlier sprints since we did not have our QA env ready. 

On the Kanban board the columns (in order) are: Ready for QA --> QA Testing--> Testing Complete --> PO Review--> Done

1. The Done issues show up in the Ready For QA state; however if they are moved to any other column - they are no longer visible... however the issues in the Ready for QA state decrement in count. 

what should reflect in the status of each column or what needs to change on the scrum board's workflow to allow these issues to reflect in the correct state (or flow) on the Kanban board.

[Marianne Miller]

We have a similar workflow.  your issues disappear because your query presents only the "done" issues.  You need a query that includes all the states.  On your board, you need to edit your configuration to include those statuses in the column definitions. 

If you include all statuses in the query, on the columns tab, you will see all in the unmapped columns.  Drag and drop the appropriate status to the appropriate column and when the issues are updated, they will move through the process flow.

1.  On the general tab, select your query

2.  on the columns tab, make sure that all statuses are mapped correctly.  there should be no unmapped statuses when you are done.

You can additional filters an/or criteria, but this basic config should accomplish what you are trying to do.

[Tami Edwards]

@Marianne Miller thanks for your response... I have the following query for the kanban board: project = "XXX" AND issuetype = Story AND status in (Done) AND Sprint in closedSprints()

This returns all the User Stories in Done state in the closed sprints. however the issues that I moved to "PO review" are not showing in the Backlog but still in the Done state and are not part of my query above.   Any further insight to manipulate the query. 

{If you include all statuses in the query, on the columns tab, you will see all in the unmapped columns.  Drag and drop the appropriate status to the appropriate column and when the issues are updated, they will move through the process flow.} . 

I did the step above however the issues still not visible in the PO Review state. any further insight.