"Hide completed issues older than" setting on Jira Software Kanban Boards

[Matthew Stublefield]

Can anyone say definitively what this setting does? Does it:

1. Hide issues from the board when there has been no activity on them for more than X weeks and they are in the right-most column?
2. Hide issues from the board when there has been no activity on them for more than X weeks and they have a resolution set?
3. Hide issues from the board when there has been no activity on them for more than X weeks and they have both a resolution set and are in the right-most column?

[Manon Soubies-Camy · Accepted solution]

Hi @Matthew Stublefield,

This setting was released in 7.9: Fast Kanban. It's basically a way to automatically clean your Kanban board - issues that are in the Done column and haven't been updated for X days will be removed from the board.

Hope this helps!

- Manon

[Matthew Stublefield]

Cool, thanks. So this is definitely based on column and not resolution, then. That's great to know for people with custom workflows who, for whatever reason, don't set a resolution on the transition to done.

[Manon Soubies-Camy]

Glad it helped! I find this new setting particularly useful too :)

[bernadette.capozzi]

I am also on JIRA Cloud and trying to finalize my filter (I'm the Admin).  I, too, want my resolved issues to fall off the Kanban (complete) column  at the end of each month.  I have a simplified filter now as such:

project in (CBL, CBLSCRUM) ORDER BY Rank ASC

would I add this: 

created >= -4w AND (status != “Closed” or Resolution = “Done” )

Appreciate the help!

[Steven Mahoney]

Is there a way to disable this and still see old issues? For example, if you have a board for each issue in an epic and don't want it to disappear until everything's done, but it might take months to complete, it gets more difficult to track progress. 

[Patrick Cartier]

Yes, you can turn the feature off which will show everything.

"never mind, show all" would be your choice in the drop down

[Patrick Cartier]

@bernadette.capozzi you will need to assign the status closed to a new column for done issues. This is not an issue with your board filter

[Rick Hadsall]

@Patrick 22 where does one see that drop down? which drop down? would like to eliminate the filter of 2 weeks for now

[Patrick Cartier]

@Rick Hadsall in the board settings. If you aren't the board admin, you won't see the ... menu to access the settings

[Samuel Araiza]

This doesn't seem to be applying to swimlanes even with issues in the Done column :/

[Miguel Costa]

the more I use jira cloud compared to the server version the less I like it...

way to make people waste their time

[Robin Wang]

Agreed!

Why did Jira have to make the decision for me without my knowing it (default to 2 weeks)??!!!!

[Stefanie_Holler]

Fully agree- is there any way to "undo" this change introduced by Jira?

[Robin Wang]

@Stefanie_Holder

Board Settings -> General -> Hide completed issues older than. Set it to "Never mind, show all".

[Ricardo da Silva Camara]

There is an suggestion for a new future related to this topic in Atlassian.

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSWCLOUD-20759 

please vote to help it get prioritezed.

[Anton Stratiev]

Hi @Manon Soubies-Camy,

I have spent hours on this and for some reason the filter option that was released with that version does not show up for me. I am the admin.

I do not see the "Hide completed issues" field at all. Is there something I need to do in order to activate that function? The tutorial article on configuring filters is quite limited and from what I see it uses non existent reference text, i.e.:

To hide completed issues:

1. Go to the desired board, then click  Board >  Configure.
2. In the Hide completed issues field, select the retention period. 
   Issues that weren't updated within this period will be hidden.

--

There is no "Board", there are the three dots. There is no "Configure", there is "Board Settings". 

Thank you in advance, 

Anton 

[Manon Soubies-Camy]

Hi @Anton Stratiev,

My guess is that you're on Jira Cloud and not on Jira Server - this is a Server only feature.

You can use the Kanban board sub-filter (Board settings > General) as a workaround, e.g.:

resolution = null OR (resolution != null AND resolutiondate > startOfWeek())

This will only display issues that are not resolved, or that have been resolved this week.

Hope this helps,

- Manon

[Anton Stratiev]

I see, that works, thank you! Hopefully the Cloud version will be up to date soon as well!

Regards,

Anton

[John Jones]

so basically the user-friendly drop-down UI on Server was replaced by developer-friendly filter queries on Cloud?  I'm no developer, but after fidgeting with this for a bit, it looks like the equivalent queries for "Hide completed issues older than" X are:

1 week: resolution = EMPTY OR resolution != EMPTY AND resolutiondate > -1w
2 weeks: resolution = EMPTY OR resolution != EMPTY AND resolutiondate > -2w
4 weeks: resolution = EMPTY OR resolution != EMPTY AND resolutiondate > -4w
Show all: leave this sub-filter blank

...and we get no toggle button in the UI either.

side note: the double condition with parens was stripped from my config.  in other words, this string from the recommendation above:

resolution = EMPTY OR (resolution != EMPTY AND resolutiondate > -2w)

was striped to:

resolution = EMPTY OR resolution != EMPTY AND resolutiondate > -2w

but it seems to give me the desired results.

[Cameron Cross]

Hi! So i've tried this:  resolution = EMPTY OR resolution != EMPTY AND resolutiondate > -2w 

and nothing changed?

I am using kanban board and trying to hide DONE tickets more than 2 weeks old?

ANything I might be doing incorrectly?

Cheers in advance

[Jon_Fister]

@Cameron Cross have you set it in your workflow that done tickets have a resolution?

[Egunsuren]

So I've set the sub-filter, works great. But what if I do want to look through the resolved tickets? Do I have to delete the filter and re-add it everytime? I made a quick filter with resolution = done but that doesn't overwrite the sub filter it seems?

[Tanya Saracino]

Hello - I'm on Jira Cloud, in a next-gen project, and can't figure out how to remove issues that are "done" or "closed" from the board or the backlog. Any suggestions or help would be appreciated... even if it's a "we don't have this feature yet" response. thanks!

[Daniel Westgate]

The only solution i have found so far is to:

Create a "Closed "status, and allow "Allow all statuses to transition to this one" Then on the board, not have a column for the closed status. You can do this under board settings (on Jira cloud)

Bit messy, but its the best option I have found that costs £0!

Regards

Daniel

[Fabian Ehrentraud]

I use this subfilter:

statusCategory != Done OR status changed AFTER -2w

[Dirk Claus]

I would not consider this request to be solved.

Well, there is this answer from Manon Soubies-Camy saying:

... issues that are in the Done column and haven't been updated for X days will be removed from the board.

Unfortunately, that's either not precisely enough or just wrong. We're having a board where columns are configured as follows:

Our board is furthermore configured to Hide completed issues older than 4 weeks. In fact, it is NOT ONLY the very last column (called Done in our case) but also our "In Review / Verification" column from which issues are hidden when laying around too long. This is a problem, I'd consider a Jira feature bug, because those issues in the (middle column) haven't yet reached one of final states (right column). 

I am suspecting the state "Resolved" is wrongly considered by the new Jira feature implementation as such a "done"-like state. However, not only we but many teams are using state "Resolved" as an indication that a ticket was implemented by a developer, but not considering review/merge/deployment which are indispensable additional steps that need to complete before the ticket is nevermore of interest (and could be hidden from boards).

Long story short, it actually DOES NOT behave like Manon Soubies-Camy described it, i.e. cleaning up only to the Done (better say: "most-right") column!

[BUGFIX] request:
I think that this Jira feature needs to be fixed in a way that only issues get hidden when their state is actually in one of the most-right column's states, but in no other state according to other (previous) columns!

[FEAT] request:
Furthermore, I noticed that the lens icon displayed below all columns (that you can click to get a list of all hidden issues) is always visible, no matter if the list would be empty or not. It would make it much easier to identify actual hidden issues, if the lens icon would only be displayed where the list indeed won't be empty.
Btw, with the bugfix from above, i.e. making the hide feature actually only be effective for the most-right column (states), that meant that the lens icon should then only appear below the most-right column but not below any other (previous) columns.

For those also struggling with the currently questionable implementation of the feature, before it gets fixed somewhen, I can just recommend to disable it and implement the hiding on your own within the query filter wherein you can specify the considered states explicitly, e.g. `... AND (status not in (Closed, Released, "Released Live", Done) OR updated > -28d)...`.

[Patrick Cartier]

I think you need to post this on Atlassian Support. This is Atlassian Community, where we ask questions of our peers for help, clarification, and discussion about Atlassian features.

There are no requests here, but rather questions and discussions. If you need to submit a request, that would be through support.atlassian.com.

FWIW, I think your points are interesting and would like to see more experimentation... back to Mathew's original question. Does the board hide issues that are in a "done" status category? You have them distributed throughout your board.

Are issues hidden in the "in progress" column if they aren't touched for four or more weeks?

[Dirk Claus]

> Are issues hidden in the "in progress" column if they aren't touched for four or more weeks?

Yes, exactly this is the issue. Not only issues are hidden that passed the board entirely, but also those stuck in a middle column where no-one took care for a while.

> You have them distributed throughout your board.

Hm, I assume you are referring to `issues that are in a "done" status`. Well, specifically for state "Resolved" this is nothing every team considers to be final (right column) as elaborated above.

Which states are considered to be "done"-like is obviously implicit knowledge implemented in the Jira feature. Instead that Jira users need to figure that out and adjust their process and state definitions according to what is hard-coded in this feature, it should rely on what the user specified as final states at the right-most column.
Hiding issues from other columns is nothing I do see any benefit of. For me it appears to be like that just because it was implemented under a motivation "because we can". Seems that was not thoroughly thought through just being contra-productive. If for a team issues remain in the middle of the process, it definitely has to care and make decisions - for each of them - what to do. They can alway close issues with a reasonable resolution like "won't do", and move it to the right (where it is okay to hide it somewhen b/c a final decision was made and documented). Anyway, it is essential to not loosing the visibility for incomplete issues stuck in the middle of the process.

[Steven Schouppe]

We recently encountered this issue.  After investigation, it appeared that one of our issue statuses that was mapped to the "To Do" column did not have a Status Category assigned to it.  This resulted in the issue being hidden when the "Hide completed..." parameter was used.

See: https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirakb/when-configuring-a-kanban-board-and-setting-the-option-hide-completed-issues-older-than-in-general-and-filter-filters-other-issues-in-other-columns-besides-the-one-in-the-done-column-993924923.html

Resolution 2 solved our issue.  And we're still on server for now.

[Dirk Claus]

pls ignore or remove

[Jason Bemis]

see also:

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-articles/Introducing-manual-board-clearing-for-your-next-gen-Kanban-board/ba-p/1411958

[Ricardo da Silva Camara]

There is an suggestion for a new future related to this topic in Atlassian for Jira Cloud.

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSWCLOUD-20759 

please vote to help it get prioritized.

[Phill Armstrong]

This feature also hides items in the ready for release column is there anyway to stop from hide those items?

[HeadPoint]

Hi! I'm facing the same issue. Have you managed to solve it?

[Grant Johnson]

I too find that this "Feature" causes ALL Issues older than the selected retention period to be hidden.. in ANY status.

Was this a bug resolved in an upgrade?

We run an old v8.4.1 Server version.

[Steven Schouppe]

Try this: 

See: https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirakb/when-configuring-a-kanban-board-and-setting-the-option-hide-completed-issues-older-than-in-general-and-filter-filters-other-issues-in-other-columns-besides-the-one-in-the-done-column-993924923.html

Resolution 2 solved our issue.  And we're still on server for now.

[Dirk Claus]

Hi Steven,

Thanks for the hint. Unfortunately, the resolution does not apply in our case. Status is green. Status values are assigned to columns as supposed to be.

I would be happy to set up a remote session, so I could show the problem.

Best,
Dirk