How to go from Backlog to Open?

[Bill Campbell]

For some reason one of My projects has all its items marked as Backlog? They used to be Open/Closed etc I can't find any way to change from Backlog to Open or Closed etc the only options are In Progress or Done? Any ideas?

Thanks

Bill

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

Sounds like your project has had its workflow scheme changed.

I'd start with a look at the workflow in use for one of the issues (there's usually a "view workflow" under the issue - ask your admins if not) and also look at the history of the issue because that should show a wrkflow change!

[Bill Campbell]

Hi Nic,

Yes your right the Main project was using Agile Simplified Workflow ..all the other projects are using Classic. I swapped it to classic and all is good again.

Thanks

Bill

[Dave Theodore [Coyote Creek Consulting]]

You'll need to provide more info to get the best answers, but it sounds like you're using Jira and the Jira project in question has a workflow that contains a status called "Backlog" (as well as Open, Closed, etc) and you're not able to move issues from the "Backlog" status to other statuses.

If I'm right so far, there are a few possibilities:

• Your workflow doesn't have a transition between the statuses in question. You'd need your Jira administrator to add them for you.
• The transition(s) are there, but they have a "condition" that is not being met and therefore the workflow button isn't being displayed. Your Jira admin can explain how the workflow is set up and what you'll need to do to meet that condition. It's common to set an "assignee only" condition on workflow transitions, so you might try assigning the issue to yourself to see if the buttons show up.
• Your user does not have permission to run workflow transitions in the project. Your Jira admin can help you with this.
• You're using a Jira Agile board and the columns are not set up correctly. The owner of the board can fix this.

I'm sure there are other possibilities, but that will hopefully point you in the right direction. If you can provide more details about the project, we can probably help you more. If this project is set up to allow you to "view read-only workflow," you'll see a link next to the status of the issue called "View Workflow." If you click that, you'll see a picture that shows the workflow diagram with all available transitions. This might be useful in troubleshooting if the permissions to view the workflow have been granted to you. I hope that helps.

[Bill Campbell]

Thanks Dave this helped me better understand Workflows and find the problem.