Feeling frustrated, can't set due date for epic or issue.

[nadia.albayati]

I can see a due date field on the cards in my kanban board. When I hover over the card it say 'Due date: None' and when I click into the card there is no field to set a due date. I also can't set a due date for epics. How are you supposed to use the roadmap if it is so difficult to add a due date?? 

[Trudy Claspill]

Are you working with a Team Managed project or a Company Managed project? I think from what you have shown you are working with a Company Managed project. It will say at the bottom of the navigation pane on the left.

Can you provide us sample images for these statements?

"I can see a due date field on the cards in my kanban board"

"When I hover over the card it says 'Due date: None' "

Are you an administrator for this project (or a Jira administrator)? You need to check the "MES: Kanban Default Issue Screen". If you are an administrator for the project you should be able to go to Project Settings > Screens, and see a link for "MES: Kanban Default Issue Screen". If you click on that link you should see the list of fields included on that screen. If that list doesn't include Due Date, then the field will not be available when you are viewing the details of the issues.

In that case a Jira administrator would need to modify that screen definition to add the Due Date field to it.

[nadia.albayati]

company software project, I am a project admin.

There is no link for me to click 

[nadia.albayati]

[Trudy Claspill]

Hm, I thought a project admin might be able to see the settings for a screen definition, but it would seem like I was wrong. Can you work with a Jira administrator for your system to get that information?

From your second image where you show the hovering, I am able to discern that an Administrator of your agile board has updated the Card Layout to include display of the Due Date field. This is possible to do even if that fields is not part of the screens for the issues in your project.

So, I suspect this goes back to the "MES: Kanban Default Issue Screen" definition not including the Due Date field. That will require a Jira Administrator to confirm and update the screen definition if it is needed. Then the Due Date field should become available for all the issues types that use that screen (Epic, Story, Task, and Sub-task).

[nadia.albayati]

I was the admin who added the due date to the card view. That's why it is so frustrating that I, as an admin, can't add a due date option to the detail issue view in a project management tool. I don't understand why it is so difficult

[Trudy Claspill]

I can't address your feeling that it is difficult, but I can offer this additional information.

For Company Managed projects configurations can be shared between projects via Schemes;

• Field Configuration Schemes,
• Workflows Schemes Issue Type Schemes,
• Screen Schemes,
• Permission Schemes
• Notification Schemes,
• and so on.

Because these can be shared between projects, the management of those items is relegated to Jira Administrators who can assess the impact of changes to all the projects that use a given scheme. A person who is a Project Administrator for a single project would not have sufficient permissions to assess the impact to other projects that share the schemes.

So, when there is a need to make another field available to a project, it is the Jira Administrators who need to update the schemes to support that, assessing the impact to all the projects affected by the shared scheme. 

Specifically with regard to making a field available there are two places this has to be accomplished

• The Field Configuration Scheme, which determines the fields that could be available to issues in a project
• The Screen Scheme, which determines which of those available fields will actually be displayed on the screens.

Many Jira Administrators will use one or very few Field Configuration Schemes across all projects. By doing this, each time they add a new custom field there are fewer schemes to update. If that field then turns out to be needed for a particular project, the Jira Admin then needs to only update the Screens for that project rather than both the Field Configuration and the Screens.

As a result, project users may see fields in field lists (like the Card Layout, or the Bulk Update screen) that reference the Field Configuration Scheme, even though those fields have not been added to the Screens used by the project.

Jira Cloud implemented another type of project methodology called Team Managed projects which gives the Project Administrator more, and less, control. For Team Managed projects a Project Admin can define their own Custom fields and Workflows, for instance. But those become unique to just that one Team Managed project. If two Team Managed projects both defined a custom field named "New Custom Field", Jira would see that as two distinct and different fields. If one tried to report against data for both Team Managed projects, "New Custom Field" would have to be included twice to get the field that belonged to each of the projects.

Team Managed projects are partially an effort to give Project Admins more control, but also are a "simpler" version of projects. There are no Field Configurations, no Screens, No Permissions Schemes, no Notification scheme. In that way they are less robust and give one less ability to control and customize the project. So, there are trade offs.

I hope you find that information useful.

[nadia.albayati]

No option to add it or make my own in issue layout by the way.