Adding Column to Board

[Michelle Flanagan]

Hi,

We are trying to add a column to our board, me and my co-worker both have administrator level of access and I'm the Project Lead. We looked up how to add a column and did that, however it gives us an option to "Create a Status," not sure what that means and then when adding that the column or "status" is grayed out and not bright like the columns. How do you add a column now because everything I've looked up that we've tried is not working for that.

Thanks,

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Michelle Flanagan 

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

The first question we need you to answer is what type of project are you using?

To get that information go to the Projects menu and select the View All Projects page. Find your project in the list, and tell us what it says in the Type column.

Second, when you say you have Administrator level of access, do you mean Project Administrator only (able to access Project Settings), or do you mean Jira Product Admin access also (clicking on the gear icon near your avatar reveals options like System, Projects, and Issues)?

Lastly, can you provide a screen image of the Columns/Status page you are viewing?

The ability and method to add columns and statuses depends on the type of project and your access level. With the additional information above we can ensure that we provide an answer that is applicable to your situation.

[Michelle Flanagan]

Hi, thank you, looks like we use a "Team-managed business" type project. I think I can access both. When I click on the gear by my avatar this is what I can select below. Please see screenshots of level of access and the new board we created is called "Sent to AHRQ for Review" and it looks very different than the rest of our original columns...We used to be able to just click on the + sign all the way on the right and simply add a column. We never got this "Create Status" box. Is that how it is now?

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Michelle Flanagan 

Thank you for that additional information. That is very helpful.

With a Business project, you get one board created with the project itself. That is the board you shared in this image. Business projects get one and only one board like this.

In a Business project board, each column is a Status for the issues in the project. Statuses tell you what "stage" of work the item is currently in; i.e. To Do, In Progress, or Done.

When you add a Column that is equivalent to adding a new Status to your workflow (the stages/statuses that the issue progress through). That is why you are being prompted to provide a Name for the Column/Status.

The pull-down list below the Name field is asking you to identify the Status Category for this new Status value.

Jira has three Status Categories. They are color coded, and the color is what you see as the background for that Statuses that are in that Category. The Status Categories and colors are:

Status Category Name	Color
To Do	gray
In Progress	blue
Done	green

Every individual Status value is associated with one of these Status Categories.

When you add a new column/status to the Business project you have to indicate the Status Category to which it belongs.

Since work typically progresses from "To Do" to "In Progress" to "Done", the columns on the boards are typically arranged from left to right, gray > blue > green

When you say you looked up how to add a column, can you provide us with a link the the instructions that you followed? The instructions that you found may have been for another type of board that is available in Jira.

With that additional information, what is it that you need help accomplishing at this point?

[Michelle Flanagan]

Hi, Apologies for the delay, thanks for getting back to me about this. This is what the instructions I was looking at for this, Add, rename, or delete a column from your board | Jira Work Management Cloud | Atlassian Support.  

I've seen the mention of workflow no other things I've been reading on the site as well and we don't have anything that relates to this either. We used to be able to add columns with no problems to our JIRA board and we don't want to add a status we want to add a new column. Has something changed with JIRA that we can't do this anymore?

Thanks, 

[Trudy Claspill]

Thank you for the link to the document. So that does appear to be for a Team Managed Jira Work Management project, which is what you are using.

The document does state that adding a column adds a status.

Add a column from your board

Adding a column to your board creates a new status for your business project’s workflow.

I don't think it was possible in the past to add a column to a Team Managed JWM project without simultaneously adding a new status. Adding a column without creating a status is possible in Scrum and Kanban boards. Perhaps you were working with one of those types of boards previously.

In JWM projects you have a few grouping options for grouping issues in Columns.

For each of these the column corresponds to a value in the specified field. You can't have a column that doesn't correspond to a value.

Only when you are grouping by Status do you have the option to add a column. Since columns must correspond to values in the specified field, adding a column requires simultaneously adding a value for the Status field.

What problem are you trying to solve by adding a column without adding a status? What do you expect to display in that column if it has no associated Status value? What would you expect to happen to a card dragged to that column?

[Michelle Flanagan]

Thanks, we need a new column on our board to add for our process of how we do things to save documents onto it, make notes, etc, just like we do for our other columns.....I'm not sure what is meant by "drag a card?" but if we created a new column, we would drag it in between our other columns we have....

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Michelle Flanagan 

I think we are miscommunicating, or we have a fundamental difference of understanding in how Jira works and the purpose of a board.

So, I'm going to back up and explain the purpose of a board. Forgive me if I am going over information you already know

A board is a way to visualize and manipulate work items. The work items appear as "cards" on the board. The board columns typically represent the various stages a work item goes through, from inception to completing the work for that item. The work item card moves from one column to another as it goes through its lifecycle.

Looking again at your board image:

Each card in those columns represent a work item for which work needs to be done.

A work item can be in various statuses throughout its lifecycle. It might initially start in a "To Do" status when the work item is first created and no work has yet been done to complete the item. When work starts it may be changed to the "In Progress" status to indicate that some work has been done towards that item but the work is not yet complete. And then it might be changed to the "Done" status when all the work is completed for that item.

The changing of status for a work item is referred to as its Workflow in Jira terminology. The Workflow includes all the possible Statuses that an item might be in, and the rules that say how it can transition from one status to another status.

Each column in the board shows the work items that are in a given Status at that moment. You can click on a card to see the details, and see that the name of the column corresponds to the Status value for that card at that moment.

You move the work item / card through its lifecycle from "To Do" to "Done" by changing its Status. You can change the Status of a work item by:

1. In the board, left-click and hold on a card, drag it to another column, and release/drop it in that column.

2. View the details of the work item, pull down the Status field, and select the new Status for the item.

Can you expand on what you mean by the following?

to add for our process of how we do things to save documents onto it, make notes, etc, just like we do for our other columns

Perhaps if you explain your work process that will help us understand, enabling us to overcome our miscommunication and address you question about creating a column.

Looking at your board I see various work items; i.e.

CW-293 Announcements

And I see various Status values; i.e.

Upcoming
In Progress
Sent to AHRQ for Review
Ready to submit to AHRQ
Submitted to A...

Does the work item CW-293 Announcements progress through these Statuses? In which Status does it start? And which Status does it change to next?

[Adrián García González]

Hi @Michelle Flanagan,

Columns are used to display issues and issues will be placed in columns according to the status we have assigned in the project workflow.

To add new columns simply use the + button in the dashboard configuration in the Columns section. I leave you documentation about it: https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/configure-columns/

I hope you find it helpful, best regards!

[Michelle Flanagan]

Thanks, when I click the plus sign on our board this is what comes up for me, a box that says what's below. 

[Michelle Flanagan]

This