Kanban Board backlog won't display all active tickets?

[Hunter Hawes]

Hi! 

I currently have a sprint board that works as needed but was asked by my boss to create a Kanban board with the same board settings to essentially be identical (to avoid the whole start and end sprint aspect). I am running into issues with the backlog though. I have a status mapped for the backlog as well as a different status for each of the four columns used for the workflow. When I have tickets mapped into each status, they show in the proper column exactly how I would like them to, but when viewing the backlog it only shows tickets in the actual backlog as well as the first column. How can I make it so all the issues on the board are visually in the backlog?

Board Workflow: Starts in backlog but To Do is the first status in the active board

To Do -> On Hold -> In Progress -> Done

When viewing the backlog only tickets in the Backlog as well as To Do appear. Need the tickets in On Hold and In Progress to also just be visually seen. 

Not necessarily looking to see the specific status in the backlog but rather just all the tickets. The split between backlog and active tickets.

[Walter Buggenhout · Accepted solution]

Hi @Hunter Hawes and welcome to the Community!

The answer is: you can't. Both the backlog status and the leftmost status are displayed in the backlog view as that lets you move issues from the backlog into the first active status of the board.

You can see this as the mechanism to transition issues from waiting to start to ready to be worked on. In kanban, this is the mechanism used to promote issues to the board.

In that respect, the functionality is fundamentally different from scrum. There it is not so much the status of issues that determines if something is prioritised to be worked on, but adding items to a sprint that is then explicitly started with the click of a button. 

Hope this helps!

[Hunter Hawes]

Ah gotcha, thanks for the reply! Yeah I just spoke with my boss and turns out he actually almost prefers it this way so it works out really well. Have a good rest of your day!

[Simon Orford]

The problem here is one wants to see in one place what the person is working on and what is in the backlog. This is often used to determine what tickets to pull in next. Switching between the board and the backlog is annoying. If you can show it in the scrum backlog why not in the kanban backlog???