how to create a task in a project and have it be blocked?

[Lejun Hu]

Hello Jira tech support,

I have a Jira account for my software team, and I created a list of projects to work on.

Someone told me about creating a task, then setting it up with a status of blocked to indicate that the task is waiting for something or has an impediment.

Is there instructions on how to do this? or a tutorial of some sorts, that can help me to to set this up?

Thanks for your help,

Lejun Hu

Sr. software engineer, Teleflex Inc.

[Esther Strom]

Hi, @Lejun Hu - welcome to the Community! First, just to clarify, we are not Atlassian tech support. If you're trying to reach actual support, you'll need to go to https://support.atlassian.com/contact. The Community is a user-driven site; we are all users and admins just like you, volunteering our time to answer questions.

That said, to add statuses, you need to update your workflow. Here is Atlassian's workflow tutorial guide. If you are OK with changing the default workflow instead of creating a new one, scroll to the "Update default project workflows" section.

[Lejun Hu]

Hi @Esther Strom ,

Thank you for the information. I went through the workflow tutorial guide, including the update default project workflow section. I can get to the project settings for my project, but I am not sure what to do next. Should I create a task then make it a blocking task? Or is there a default setting under my project that allows me to make the overall project a blocking project?

Thank you,

Lejun

[Esther Strom]

I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying you want to create a project where every ticket in it is listed as blocked by default? 

[Lejun Hu]

No, I mean that I have a project created, but I want to make it so that it is blocked by a task. This is to indicate that the owner of the task is waiting on something or has an impediment. A colleague said this is the way to mark the project as blocked, so that I know it is not progressing.

[Esther Strom]

OK, so "project" in this case is an issue type (a ticket); you're not referring to the Jira project itself?

In that case, you shouldn't need to fiddle with workflows. The native way to do that is to link the two tickets together with a link type of Blocker (or Blocked By, depending on which ticket you do the linking from.)

If you're not familiar with linking, here's how.

First, click the Link button on your ticket (depending on your screen size, it may be a button with the text "Link issue" or just a chain icon).

This will display the Linked Issues section on your ticket; typically it displays below the Description field. In that area, first click the dropdown to the left to choose the type of link (Is Blocked By or Blocks in your case). Then use the search box to search for the ticket number of the task that's blocking you, and finally click the Link button (it will turn blue when you have an issue selected in the search box.)

Now your tickets are linked, so anyone who views either ticket will see that one is blocked by the other.

If you want a visual indicator in your board as well, you can also add a flag to the ticket. Click the three dots menu at the top right to open the menu. This is also a way you can indicate that a ticket is blocked by something outside of Jira (skip the issue linking if the blocker is not another Jira issue).

On your board, the card will show up in yellow and have a red flag icon on it.

Hope this helps!

[Lejun Hu]

So I figured it out from talking to the engineering architect. So apparently he wants me to create a column in the board called blocked, and have me drag the task into that column, to indicate that the task is in a block state. I think that is all he wanted me to do.

Thanks for your answer, much appreciated.