Assign issues to different Kanban boards in one parent project

[Matthew Hardy]

Hello! I am new to Jira and Kanban project management.

I am using a Kanban board in Jira, and want to assign distinct issues to specific boards under one parent project.

I understand how to create a board, but do not see how to assign issues to different boards. For example I would like to have a board say called 'project A' and a board on 'project B', and manage these as somewhat separate efforts under the parent project.

Then I would like to create issues and assign them to the appropriate boards. As I see it now in Jira, the same issues appear in both boards.

The Query filter it currently uses for each board is: project = FJN ORDER BY Rank ASC

Any help would be much appreciated. 

Many Thanks

[Jack Brickey · Accepted solution]

Hi @Matthew Hardy , welcome to the Community. Think of boards as visual filters. The board will display issues based upon the filter that defines it. So to display different issues on different boards then simply establish a filter that achieves your goal.

example - let’s say you want to differentiate boards by Components then your filters would look like this…

project = FJN and component = aaa

project = FJN and component = bbb

etc.

[Matthew Hardy]

Hi @Jack Brickey

Thank you for your response. 

So one of my boards is Leicester BREX2465, so using the line above would it be project = FJN and component = Leicester BREX2465 

[Jack Brickey]

No. Not unless you are using Components specifically. The question here is, how do you wish to differentiate your boards? Issue type, labels, components or some custom field. What exactly is your goal with having different boards?

[Matthew Hardy]

The goal is that we have a parent which is the customer.

Then the board created under the parent is all the jobs which we are doing for this one customer, therefore all the different boards need to be able to have its own issues assigned to its own particular board. 

I'm not sure what way you think is best to complete this?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

How are you identifying the "parent" here?  How are you recording it on the issues?

We've already mentioned how to do this, both Jack and I have mentioned labels, components and custom fields

[Jack Brickey]

Given what you have conveyed I would suggest a custom single select field e.g. “client” where you capture each client. When issues are created for a client then that field is completed with the appropriate client. Use this field to define your client Kanban boards.

Note, if you don’t have too many clients you could use Components field and then have a single board using swimlanes by Components. 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Just a note of caution when choosing what to base the choice of board on - multi-selection fields may look very confusing (components and labels are a special case of multi-select, so it applies to them).  They don't, but do, enforce exclusivity!

Imagine you've decided to use labels for this, and told people to use labels of their name.  Then you set up a board for "label = Alice", a second for "label = Bob" and a third for "label = Charlie"

When you put the label Bob on ABC-123, then it will appear on Bob's board and not on the other two.  But if you put Alice and Bob on ABC-123, two things to be aware of:

• ABC-123 will appear on Alice and Bob's boards (and if you put it into a sprint on either board, that sprint will start showing on the other board too)
• If you have a single board, and use swimlanes as Jack suggests, ABC-123 will appear in the first swimlane that matches, and none of the others.  It won't appear in both Alice and Bob's swimlanes, only the first one

This is why I tend to recommend the use of single-selects for this sort of thing!

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

Boards are not containers for issues, you do not "assign an issue to a board".  Projects are the issue containers.

Boards are a view of a selection of issues, so if you want to have issues appear exclusively on one of two boards, you change the selection criteria the boards are using.  

In your case, both of your boards say "project = FJN", so what you need to do is change the question to "project = FJN and <something>" on one board, and "project = FJN and not <something>" on the other.

The something could be almost anything you've put on the issues - reporter, assignee, the value of a select list.  You'll need to be a bit more clever with the filters if you decide to use a multiple-select option like labels or components