How can I use the same status for more than one column in Jira?

[Mariana Pieslak]

I'd like to have "To do", "In progress" and "Solved" statuses replicated for multiple columns in my delivery pipeline.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

This makes no sense.  The whole point of a column is to represent where an issue is in your process.  Having issues appear in more than one column completely defeats the purpose of having columns on boards.

Could you explain why you think you want this?  It sounds like you might need something boards can't do, because they're not for it.

[salob]

other software supports this

From jira documentation:

Keep your workflow simple: limit statuses and transitions

Adding a status for every part of your team’s process may seem like a good idea, and Jira definitely supports it. But keep in mind that every status and transition adds more complexity for the team working in the workflow. If you want to move fast, keep your process lean.

After mapping how your team works, include only the statuses and transitions you need. A workflow with too many statuses and transitions can be confusing to understand. Remember that the team working in the workflow will have to understand and use it.

So you can see adding a status for every single process is a bad idea, you want to keep your workflows simple. Sometimes columns can be handy on your board to separate in progress items, it can sometimes just be required for a temporary view or for a product owner to organise new items for example.

In github issues are simply open or closed then teams can set up their own github project boards and quickly add / remove columns on the fly without affecting every user's workflow and adding jira admin requirements to go and update transitions, rules, schemes etc.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

No, it's not doing that.  It is letting the admins edit their local workflows.

Jira supports that in team-managed projects.

[Patrick Filoche]

How does Jira support that in team-managed projects?

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Patrick Filoche 

Team Managed projects in Jira allow the Project Administrators for the project to customize the workflow. Workflow customizations made in one Team Managed project are specific to only that project and have no impact on any other project in the Jira application.

In contrast, modifying the workflows associated with Company Managed projects can be done only by Jira Administrators. This is because workflows can be shared between multiple Company Managed projects, so modifications to the workflow may impact multiple Company Managed projects.

For more information about the differences between Team Managed and Company Managed projects refer to:

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/learn-the-basics-of-team-managed-projects/

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Mariana Pieslak 

Welcome to the Atlassian community!

You can't do that. A given status can be mapped to one and only one column in a given board.

Can you provide more information about your use case? Perhaps we can suggest an alternative solution.

[Mitchell Cowie 2]

I can provide my use case of why I'd like to see this feature.

I'd like to be able to use swimlanes to represent the stages of a ticket's lifecycle (Building, Reviewing, Staging, Testing, Releasing). Each stage follows the same 3-steps: Todo, In Progress, and Done. These would be my columns.

However, there is overlap in the steps for the stages. The Building stage's Done step is the Reviewing stage's Todo. Reviewing's Done is Staging's Todo. And so on.

I'd like each swimlane to be able to represent the entirety of the stage's steps. And I'd like to be able to still perform left-to-right transitions to move tickets through their steps within the stage.

I know this could be achieved by simply creating separate boards for each stage, but it doesn't provide a concise, hierarchical view the way my proposed solution would.

[Trudy Claspill]

How could Jira possible decide which column to display an issue in if one status is mapped to multiple columns?

[Patrick Filoche]

What are the alternatives to having a single status across multiple columns?

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Patrick Filoche 

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

In Jira a Status value can be mapped to only one column in a given agile board.

So, the alternative is you add a Status to the workflow to map to each column.