Define workflows for company-managed projects with schemes
10 min
Advanced
By the end of this lesson, you’ll be able to:
- Create a workflow scheme
- Associate workflow schemes with work types
- Edit a workflow scheme
- Share workflows
Create a workflow scheme
In company-managed projects, Jira admins associate work types with a workflow using a workflow scheme.
👉 For example: The Bug work type should use the Bug workflow, which has different transition screens. All other work types should use the simplified workflow.
Each project can only use one workflow scheme. You can and should reuse one workflow scheme for multiple projects to simplify administration.
To create a workflow scheme:
- In the upper-right corner of Jira, select Settings (represented by a gear icon).
- Under Jira admin settings, select Work items.
- In the sidebar, under Workflows, select Workflow schemes.
- Select Add workflow scheme.
- Name your scheme and add a detailed description so Jira admins know when to use it.
- Select Add.
- To add another workflow to your scheme, select Add workflow. You can assign the workflow to work types while adding it.
- To assign a workflow to work types, select Assign.
- To remove a workflow from your scheme, select Remove.
Associate a workflow scheme with a project
To apply the workflow scheme, you need to associate it with one or multiple projects. Only Jira admins can associate schemes with projects.
When you first create a company-managed project, it will use the default workflow scheme for that project type. Jira admins can configure this scheme as needed.
You can also change which scheme a project uses after you create the project.
To associate a work type scheme with a project:
- In the sidebar, next to the project name, select More actions (represented by ···), then Project settings.
- In the project settings sidebar, select Workflows.
- Select Switch Scheme
- Select your scheme, then select Associate.
If you edit your workflow scheme, you’ll need to update your board as well.
👇Watch this video to learn about configuring workflow schemes.
Let’s explore an example!
Bill, a company-managed project admin, wants to add the Criteria field to the screen users see when they close requests. He does not want to add the Criteria field to other work types in the project as it isn’t relevant.
Jayda, a Jira admin, wants to meet Bill’s requirements. But, she wants to configure it as simply as possible, so this change doesn’t create more schemes to maintain or impact other projects.
To meet this requirement:
- Jayda can copy and modify the existing workflow to show the Criteria field when transitioning to Done. Then, she can update the project’s workflow scheme to apply her new workflow only to the Request work type. However, this will impact other projects that use this workflow scheme, and it will add a new workflow for Jira admins to maintain.
- Jayda can add the Criteria field to the current transition screen in the workflow associated with every work type. For all work types except Request, Jayda can hide the Criteria field in the field configuration. However, this will impact other projects that use that field configuration.
Jayda needs to consider the impact of both options and choose which one will meet Bill’s project needs while minimizing the impact on administration.
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Best practices for creating workflows in Jira
- Best practices for configuring workflows
- Best practices for managing workflows
- Best practices for workflow governance
- Troubleshoot workflows