Issues overview

What an issue is, the four issue types, how keys work, the fields every issue carries and where you see them.

An issue is one piece of work your team tracks: a feature to build, a bug to fix, a chore to finish. Every issue belongs to one project, has a type, moves through that project's workflow and can be planned into a sprint or a release.

Issue types

Four types can be created:

Epic — a larger outcome that groups other issues as its children. Epics also appear on the Roadmap.
Story — a piece of value from the user's point of view.
Task — a unit of work. New issues default to Task.
Bug — something that is broken.

Admins can rename these and change their colours in Administration → Trackers & priorities, and a project's Schemes page can narrow which types and priorities that project offers.

Issue keys

Each issue gets a key made of its project's key and a number, such as SWD-12. The key is how you find, link and mention an issue: type it into search, use it as a parent or link target, or open/issues/SWD-12 directly.

Fields on every issue

Title and Description — what the work is.
Status — where it is in its workflow. See Moving issues through a workflow.
Priority — one of four levels (Urgent, High, Medium and Low by default; admins can rename them).
Assignee — the one person responsible. Chosen from the project's team.
Reporter — who raised it. Set automatically.
Labels — free tags for grouping and filtering.
Story points and a time estimate.
Sprint and Release — both belong to the issue's project.
Start date and Due date — the due date cannot be before the start date.
Parent issue — makes this issue a sub-issue of another.
Watchers — people notified about changes and comments.
Custom fields your admins have added, where the project has them switched on.

Where you see issues

Issues in the sidebar lists every issue you can see across your projects, with tabs for All issues, My issues, Active, Blocked and In review, filters, grouping, sorting and Export CSV.
A project's own Issues, Backlog and Board pages show only that project.
Active sprint in the sidebar opens the board, where cards move between status columns.
Clicking an issue opens it in a panel over the list; Open as full page gives it its own page.

Sub-issues are hidden from lists by default

An issue with a parent belongs to that parent, so the Issues list, Board and Backlog leave sub-issues out. You still reach them from the parent's Child issues section, from their own link, or on the Roadmap. To list them too, open More filters on the Issues page and turn on Include sub-issues.