Question about the organization of tickets in Jira Cloud

[Eric Rosenfield]

Hi,

So I've got both a Kanban board and a Backlog turned on, and I'm seeing some curious behavior that I'd like to understand.

For example, I've here got one ticket in the "Board" category on the Backlog page and a bunch of tickets in the Backlog.

And when I look at the board, I only see the ticket that's in the "board" section in the Backlog.

This isn't necessarily bad, but according to the documentation anything with the "To Do" status should appear on the Kanban Board, but the stuff in the Backlog section does not even though it has that status.

Is there a particular field on the ticket that determines whether or not the ticket is in the "Backlog" and will appear on the board? If so, I can't find it and don't see it when I export the tickets.

By the same token when I have a Story and create a child task for it, it does not appear on the Kanban board, but I don't know what field determines that or how I would change it if I did want the task to show up in the Kanban board (but remain a child task of the story).

As far as I've been able to tell the Documentation does not explain this, though it's possible I missed something.

Anyone able to help me out?

Thanks

[Bill Sheboy · Accepted solution]

Hi @Eric Rosenfield 

It appears you are using a team-managed project, and that would explain what you are observing.  For this project type:

• Issues in the "to do" status could be in the backlog or on the board, as you show.  I do not believe there is any field at this time to indicate an issue is on the board.  There are a couple of suggestions around adding that capability: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSWCLOUD-18760  and for automation https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSWCLOUD-21481
• Subtasks can by shown on the board by changing to group by subtask, on the right side of the board.  This is a suggestion to allow seeing the subtasks without grouping: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSWCLOUD-18064

Kind regards,
Bill

[Chris Buzon]

In the Kanban boards you're reserving an entire status (or several) for the "Backlog" -- they  can be called anything you want.  If you move other statuses into the kanban backlog field, you'll get more 'folders' (based on the status) in the backlog tab as well.  If you remove all the statuses from the Kanban backlog section, the backlog tab goes away entirely.

So, each of your columns should have at least one status in it, and only tickets in that status will appear there (provided they also meet your filter criteria, or sub-filter criteria).

In this screenshot I would have 3 folders inside the backlog, for example.  I don't have any status in the selected for development column (that's bad, in reality I would place at least 1 ToDo/grey status in there - which would appear at the top of my backlog.  That's "board" in your example.), so my board would be potentially not working as expected.

[Chris Buzon]

Bill's answer is going to be more relevant, since you're using a Team-Managed project. :)