Updating a Status Title in a Workflow

[Lesa Abes]

I am attempting to simply change the title of the status "Pending Estimates" in my Workflow to "Pending" and am receiving the error message, "A status with that name already exists, please enter a different name." Within this workflow, there is not another status with this title and I have also spent time looking at all other "Active" Workflows as well and have not been able to find one. Thoughts? Thank you!

[Petter Gonçalves]

Hello Lesa,

It's possible that you have a created status with that name that is not linked to any workflow or the Linked Status has not the same name as the status defined in the workflows.

You can check it by navigating to JIRA Settings > Issues > Statuses and checking if the status you need is not already listed there.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

The list of available status is global, not local to your workflow.  So I suspect the global list already has a status of "pending", so you can't rename another status to that.

To use "pending", edit the step of the workflow and select the pre-existing "pending" status

[Lucio Lara Cruz]

Hi Nic! how r u doing? I am having just the same issue.. :/  how do I select the pre-existing status? 

What i did is similar, changed the status name from "TO DO" to NEEDS DEFINITION ...I want to change it back but doesn't let me...  and by being in the workflow view I simply don't find how to change the status (name) to  a pre-existing one... :/ 

Thanks in advance!

Sincerely,

Lucio Lara

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Hmm, you should be able to change the status name back exactly as @Petter Gonçalves  says - admin -> issues -> status

In the workflow view, edit the workflow, and in the graphical view, click on the status, which will then throw up a box where you can change it.

If that's not working, could you explain what exactly is blocking you?

[Jorge]

Hello!

Same issue here.

If I do as suggested "To use "pending", edit the step of the workflow and select the pre-existing "pending" status" is there anyway to test before publishing?

Thanks!

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

No, you have to publish to apply the changes so you can use the new flow.

[Ines Gomez]

Hi, 

I've tried to change the title of a Product Discovery Jira issue. I get the same error, saying it already exists. But this status is not either on the dropdown or in the status lists mentioned earlier. I do have it on other Jira precuts but not in Product Discovery. I could link an already existing status if "TO DO" would come up on the dropdown, but it does not. Help, thanks!

[Süleyman]

Hi Nic,

I have the same problem. When I try to  create new status, I got error. when I check the statuses ( admin -> issues -> status ). I saw that this status is alreday exist.  if I change the exist status, I know that my other project will affected. I dont want to change.

How can I add any existed status into my new workflow ?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Edit the workflow and associate the existing status with the step you want to use it for.  

[Süleyman]

But I cant see the exist other status.

As you see in my already Exist status there are only 4 different and I want to add another one.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Your screenshot is of you trying to create a new status (and failing because it already exists).  You need to click on the existing status to get the properties and select the existing status.

[Süleyman]

But as you see there is no this status behind of adding screenshot. There only 4 status which has not include "ERTENLENDİ"

İf I must add this status can you write step by step please.

Thanks

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

But the status does exist, that's what the error message is telling you. 

Stop trying to add a new status to the workflow, and instead change the step to use the existing one that you have already.

[Tanel Särgava]

As you can see from the screenshot, the status is not present in the workflow but it's somewhere hidden. I'm having the same issue - I created a new column in the kanban board named "BACKLOG" and deleted it immediately. Then went to the workflow setting and tried to create a new status "BACKLOG" and got the error that it already exists. But when looking at the workflow screen there is no such status called "BACKLOG"

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

As I said in my answer, status is a global object, not local to your workflow.

It's a convenience to be able to create new status while editing a workflow, but it is not done in the workflow.  When you create a new status in the workflow, it gets added to the global list.

But if you remove a status from a workflow, it does not remove it from the global list, because the status might be used in other workflows.

When you added "backlog" you created a new status.  So when you try to add it again, you're trying to duplicate a status that already exists with the same name, which Jira, rightly, does not allow.

Simple fix - stop trying add new status in the workflow edit, select "backlog" from the drop-down.

You might also want to nip into Admin -> Issues -> Issue attributes -> Status and housekeep the list.  There's the option to delete any that are marked with "No associated workflows"

(As an aside, the poor design of team-managed projects do allow for duplicates, which makes them pretty much unusable in large organisations, because you can't search status by name)