How to limit Status Dropdown Options in Jira Classic Cloud

[Larkin Rogers]

I have created a new classic project in Jira Cloud and need to know how to limit the status (or columns) available to just those in the board. these are the dropdowns that allow me to move the jira to another column. Say from "to do" to "in progress"  Currently, all statuses from all 5 boards are listed in alphabetical order, kind of a mess. Thanks in advance for the help

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

You will need to amend your workflow.

The workflow for the issues define what status are available.  Your boards are a view of a set of issues, and they have no option but to show your workflow, otherwise they would be useless. 

If you want to stop status X being available to push the issue into, you need to remove the transition into that status from the current status from the workflow (or make it invisible by adding conditions that prevent it appearing)

[Larkin Rogers]

Thanks Nic, does this apply in simplified workflow or do I need to make an un-simplified workflow?  I am a new Jira user and I do want to keep this simple if possible.  If so, so you know of a good resource to learn the process? thanks

[Larkin Rogers]

To add more info, here is my dropdown: 

and here is the whole workflow:

These are all the status' in my project from all 5 boards. I want to limit the dropdown options to just the columns available on the board.  Thanks

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

To limit the status available to the ones you are using in a board, you will have to remove all the ones you do not want from the workflow.  i.e. make the board cover all of your workflow.

You can do that with simplified workflows, yes.

[Larkin Rogers]

Thanks Nic, but do the workflows apply to the issue type or to the boards? from the instructions I have seen with workflows, it seems they are applied to the issue type, but all our issue types will be running through all boards.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

They apply to the wissue type.

A board is a view of a selection of issues, it can't change the workflow just because it chooses not to display parts of it.  The status in the workflow are valid for the issue, so the workflow has to allow you to use them, irrespective of what the board is showing.

[Larkin Rogers]

Thanks Mic, I was afraid of that. Is there a way to do what I want to do?  have interactive boards that show only their own status'?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I cannot think of a way to get close without some significant coding, and even then, I trip up on one part of it, as I am really not sure it could be done without hacks to the core code (which you could only really achieve on Server/DC installs anyway)

TLDR: there's a lot to think about here, some tech, some procedural. Both mean it's probably not going anywhere.

The only route I can think of is

• A non-simplified and non-Next-gen workflow
• Coding for conditions that can compare the current board config with the transition's end point to see if the target status is on the board
• You'd need that condition on every transition in every workflow (except "create" where you can't have conditions, but could do it with the more annoying option of a validator)

Where that falls down for me is that I do not know how (or even if you could) set the context of "the current board".  I can work out code for "given a board and a workflow condition, see if the current transition should be available", and the "condition" part is easy because it's part of the workflow.

Where I'm stuck is "what board?".  How do you tell a condition which board you are referring to?

Take a very simple example that I use a lot.  The workflow is generally:

To do -> in Dev-> Dev done -> in test -> Done

My developers have a board showing the first three status, my testers have the last three columns on their board.  (This has some peculiar reporting problems itself, but they don't matter for this example).

When I'm pretending to be a tester, I look at the tester's board.  For me there are now two problems:

• I do not know how to feed the current view into a condition.  I think it can be done in the code, but I really do not know.  It looks hard to me because I think the conditions are executed before there is any knowledge of the current view.  But I'm not a developer and I do not know.
• The one that breaks it totally - what happens when I look at the issue view?  I'm not using a board any more, so there's no data that could feed the need to know "what board".  You're not in one. 
  • Or I look via a search, or report. 
  • And why would a valid status in the workflow disappear just because I switch to the developer board, when it's a valid part of the process?

[Larkin Rogers]

Thanks Nic, I apricate it a lot, you saved me for keeping at this.  I will edit the work flow for each issue type so only those statuses are available and that will reduce the clutter enough I hope.