Resolved vs Done - Please help me to understand!

[Lauren Hinrichs]

What in the world is happening with resolved vs done???  I'm implementing automation in the data center (moving to cloud early next year) and there is definitely some different functionality between the two.  Any help is appreciated! 

Thanks in advance,

Lauren

[Mikael Sandberg · Accepted solution]

You can find the best practices regarding resolution here. Resolution is a way to indicate that the issue is resolved and that is how Jira knows where in the lifecycle the issue is. The status is just that, it indicate where in the workflow the issue is. Lets say you move the issue to Done, then the resolution indicate why the issue was moved to done. I have always recommended when someone wanted to make changes to a workflow that there should only be one or two terminal statuses (green) like Close or Done and then use the resolution to indicate why the issue was moved to that status.

[Lauren Hinrichs]

Thanks for your reply! 

So is the system field titled, "Resolved Date," simply the date when the resolution (the 'why') was input?   

[Lauren Hinrichs]

Also, to avoid confusion, do a lot of teams decide to hide the "Resolved Date" and/or "Resolution" fields?  

Many Thanks!

[Lauren Hinrichs]

@Mikael Sandberg - I'm confused with the statement, "Resolution is a way to indicate that the issue is resolved and that is how Jira knows where in the lifecycle the issue is."

So is it the Status or the Resolution that controls where in the lifecycle an issue resides? 

If I remove Resolution and Resolved Date, will that have a negative impact on the functionality? 

I've inherited this Jira configuration from MANY before me so it's extremely difficult to decipher what is going on.  

[Mikael Sandberg]

What will happen if you remove resolution is that issues that are in a done status will still be considered open by Jira. For example the created vs resolved report would show that you have not resolved any issues since that report relies on the resolution field. Another thing that you will notice is that if you set the resolution the issue key will have a strike through indicating that it is resolved. 

Jira considers all issues that have not the resolution set as open, and it is only when you set the resolution that Jira consider the issue as done. 

My recommendation is to have as few terminal (done) statuses. Instead of having won't do, closed - duplicate, done, closed, released, etc statuses you can use one status and then use resolution to indicate why the issue is closed/done.

[Lauren Hinrichs]

I agree.  Any idea if all of these resolutions come out of box or were they possibly added by former admins?  

[Lauren Hinrichs]

I'm running a query now to see what resolutions are used currently.  Many Thanks again!!

[Mikael Sandberg]

On Cloud these are the default ones:

It has been 3+ years since I used Jira Server/DC but I found this article that shows the default ones on Server/DC. 

[Danut M _StonikByte_]

Hi @Lauren Hinrichs,

Perhaps you should try a better alternative to the limited reports and gadgets of Jira. Our Great Gadgets app for Jira Cloud is much more powerful than the Jira reports and gadgets.

With this app you can track your Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, ISTM, ... projects in an easy and effective manner.  Just have a look over the articles from our blog to make an idea.

More specifically, with this app you can have a nice reported vs done chart not only by issue count, but also by story points or time estimates. Take a look here for how to make this happen: A powerful Reported vs Done chart for Jira dashboards.

I hope this helps.

Danut.

[Lauren Hinrichs]

Thank you!  I'll check this out.