I really hope we can roll this back. We have a large team that uses these tickets, and changes like this cause a lot of heartburn with no real upside. It also means changing a lot of our training materials every time we have a largely cosmetic change like this. It has an impact across the organization that is not worth it for us. And honestly, it looks terrible from a user standpoint. It clutters up an already busy area.
As a person with ADHD, I have, already and on more than one occasion, been in the middle of reading a comment, realized that I should update the status of a ticket, then had to scroll back to the top of the ticket to change the status so as to not forget, then had to find my place again.
Prior to today, this is something I could do without even having to look away from what I was reading.
It was frustrating enough when the active comment box became sticky in a way that it would often cover a large portion of what I would need to scroll to in order to review different information present in a ticket I was working on, but this is extremely workflow-breaking.
This update rolled out to my organization, or at least my instance, this morning, and I've already become frustrated to the point I've had to stand up and stretch multiple times.
Before this update, meta information was always available when looking at the ticket contents and comments.
This change article has been out for roughly a week and has already amassed around 5 pages comments that are almost exclusively people asking for this to be changed back or have the option to be changed.
The only update to the article itself was an acknowledgement that this is not something that Atlassian is interested in rolling back despite this.
There are new complaints about this being workflow-breaking every 20-30 minutes.
I'd be interested to see the factors and results of the A/B testing that was mentioned multiple times, as I have trouble believing that robust usage of JIRA would make this change even marginally desired.
I understand and appreciate the intent behind this change as well as that you made it with data driven analysis. That said, I do not find that it improves my experience. Instead, it has made my experience worse.
It would be nice if this was something users could position. The previous location for me was much more intuitive and user friendly. It allowed me to make status changes easier. I am having to scroll back to the top more often now to make those changes.
In short, I really wish you would reconsider rolling this change back until it can be something users themselves have control over. I do not believe this was a positive change.
this is NOT the appropriate way to "announce" such a significant change. i've been fielding frantic emails and calls from panicked users who are in the middle of critical actions for a launch and can't promote any of their work items.
If you want to make changes then I get that, but TELL YOUR USER BASE - don't hide it in a forum.
I liked the Status in the previous location because when you scrolled down the page in the work item on the left side of the page, the Status remained fixed on the right side. Now, when you scroll down the page, you can no longer see the Status of the item.
Regardless of the value of the change, such a significant change should be highlighted with a roadblock pop-up. Existing users were asking if they or the client company had somehow created a misconfiguration. It should not be on the client company admins to field queries about changes they didn't make and didn't even know about.
But I'll quote a former colleague: "Change is always bad. Only sometimes not changing is worse." This was not one of those times.
@Ahmud Auleear reading through the comments, it seems like the problem people have is not necessarily with the location of the button, but with the fact that it's not longer visible when scrolling the content area. For what it's worth, that would be the same problem on the sidebar as well for work items with lots of fields.
With that being said, a quick fix for this problem could be to move the status into the sticky header once it becomes sticky. That way it's still accessible as one of the main actions on the work item.
The way I see it is, if we have a quick update that a user needs to do in Jira, the components in the right panel would do them.
The centre of any story deals with the requirements and items that we'd take additional steps to finish, like adding a sub-task or adding a link to the story etc., using the "Add" button right below the title of the story.
Quick changes like "Status updates" or "Change assignee" or add "Fix versions" etc are generally 2-click items and were rightfully placed in the right panel.
Now it is hard to keep sight on the "Status" of the story with this change.
For me the problem is not, that the Button was moved, my and my users main problem is, that now the Button is in different places for Service Management Issues and for Jira Software Issues. Since we have them in the same boards for people to have an easier time to work, it's super confusing for the button to be in one place for some issues and in another place for others.
Is there a plan to have them in the same place for all project types?
Suggested this prior a few months prior to the rollout:
It would keep all action buttons accessible while scrolling down through the content of the work item even if you're 30 comments deep.
I don't really have an issue with the status switcher moving from the right panel but I really hope that the next iteration of this UX keeps the action type buttons like status switching or adding linked work items visible while scrolling the page.
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After testing the change a bit, I have to say it is really frustrating. Like many others already wrote, now we get many questions where the heck the Status button went and have to explain again where to look and update documentations internally.
But this is in my opinion the smaller of the issues (we have a small team). The bigger one is an active time loss every day caused by extensive scrolling which is now necessary to look at the status:
For example, every time somebody sends me a ticket link with a pinned comment, I need to scroll up to see, in which status the ticket is, before scrolling back down to add a new comment.
If you have descriptions which are longer then a few sentences or use any images or videos, the button disappears as soon as your scroll down a bit, even before you ae in the comment section.
Another Example: We are using a "New" status for our work items which moves to "ToDo" after the item has all information added. If you write a proper description, now you need to scroll back up to prove read it and then scroll back up again, to do the status change.
A few seconds scrolling up and down might not be an issue, if you only work on one or two work items, but if you need to check many of them this can add up to minutes of your work day. Furthermore, every time you scroll away you shift your focus, and if you wanted to confirm again, because you got interrupted, you need to scroll again instead of just glancing at the ticket and hitting the button.
I'm not against changes per se, but please think more about the additional consequences they might cause.
Like suggested many times, important information should not be scrolled, so please make the button sticky, so that it is always visible. This in turn would also solve your initial design goal with making it easier to find, because it is always at the same location.
I agree with all these comments, this UI change is really frustrating and actually is having a negative impact of our flows. We're always looking for the status button now and the new location is really not user-friendly....
Would it be possible to have an option in the settings to choose between the new layout / old one? I'd love to roll back...
I agree with all the points already raised against this change, especially the visibility issue.
While making the status button disappear when scrolling is frustrating for everyday users, it becomes even more problematic for colleagues with disabilities. Requiring additional scrolling or pointer movements undermines the accessibility commitments Atlassian has publicly endorsed. Accessibility is a major priority for my company, and I think I know it is for Atlassian as well.
Please take this perspective into serious consideration in the next steps of this feature’s evolution.
@Ahmud Auleear , I 100% challenge your "testing". I have spoken with some Atlassian Champions recently who were on your test group and they reported that they said this was NOT a good change and did not recommend it. Give us one user that really thinks this is a good change. And I would bet that user is a minimal user, not an experienced user.
If you're really "listening" you would at the very least make this configurable. I have not seen such outcry about a terrible change since JSM changed the default on workflow transitions to be internal comments vs public comments. The JSM team did "listen" and made it configurable as it was obviously very controversial and would severely impact how people work.
Apparently not only is the Jira team NOT listening but also isn't really working closely with JSM which did NOT make this change to the status. So now we have this huge inconsistency again between the products.
Atlassian is pushing "system of work" and "jira for all teams", but that doesn't fly when you have a huge inconsistencies between the products.
This attitude is extremely disappointing from a "product manager". Imho this goes against the Atlassian values which I have embraced for 15+ years.
PLEASE, PLEASE do not go forward this change OR make it configurable, or if you really think you know better, and I would challenge that 100 times over, then make the status "sticky" as some suggested. To do nothing is arrogant and dismissive of this obvious group of very outraged loyal and experienced customers.
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