Board configuration and the user story map

The User Story Map in Easy Agile TeamRhythm will show issues from your Jira board. This means that your board configuration in Jira will change how the app works.

This includes:

Whether you’re using a Scrum or Kanban board
What Estimate Statistic is used on a Scrum board
Any Quick Filters created for your board
What projects and issues are included in your board filter query
The order/ranking used on your board

You can learn more about Jira Software boards in Atlassian’s guide Jira Software boards introduction.

Note that this only applies to Jira Software Projects. Other project types such as Jira Service Management projects don’t use Scrum or Kanban boards.

Board types: Scrum and Kanban

When creating a new board in Jira, you’ll choose to make it either a Scrum or a Kanban board. This will affect the features of the board in Jira such as sprints, estimation, and the backlog.

In Easy Agile TeamRhythm, the board type determines how sprints, estimation and retrospective creation work:

	Scrum	Kanban
Sprints	Sprint swimlanes available on the user story map	No sprints
Estimation	Select “Story Points” or “Original Time Estimate” for the Estimation Statistic to use on the User Story Map	No estimation statistic
Retrospectives	1 retrospective for each sprint	Create retrospectives as-needed

For more information on configuring Estimation Statistics in Jira, see Atlassian’s guides for Jira Cloud or Jira Data Center.

Team-managed projects (Jira Cloud only)

On Jira Cloud, you can also choose to create a team-managed project. Unlike on a company-managed project, you won’t choose a Scrum or Kanban board. Features including sprints, versions, estimations, and the backlog can be switched on and off in Project Settings.

Learn more about configuring team-managed projects in Jira Cloud here.

The User story map in Easy Agile TeamRhythm works in team-managed projects. However, you may encounter limits due to the different and smaller feature set of these projects.

In-app filters use components and Quick Filters, but these are not available in team-managed projects.
Team-managed projects cannot be changed into multi-project boards as the board filter cannot be changed.
Multi-project boards (in company-managed projects) where a team-managed project is added to the board filter face some compatibility issues. This is primarily caused by the unique way Jira handles issue types in team-managed projects.

Board Filter Query

The Board Filter Query controls what Jira issues are shown on your board.

Every new Jira project has a default board containing all issues in that project. This query might look like project = ABC ORDER BY Rank ASC.

However, a team might change this to suit their needs:

A team working on issues multiple projects might create a multi-project board.
A team working on part of a project might create a board with an extra filter in it, such as project = ABC AND component = iOS ORDER BY Rank ASC.

Learn more about editing the board filter in Jira Cloud or Jira Data Center.

Multi-project boards

By creating a multi-project board in Jira, you can create a user story map from issues across your projects. Learn more about creating a board based on a set of projects in Jira Cloud or Jira Data Center.

When creating new issues on the User story map or Retrospective pages, you’ll be prompted to select a project if there is more than one:

Screenshot of creating an issue on the user story map with a dropdown open listing different projects to select

If the board contains more than 10 projects, you may encounter limitations:

The project list when quick-creating issues in the Easy Agile TeamRhythm app might not load: after submitting, you’ll get a pop-up when you can select a project and finish creating the issue.
Permissions such as “Manage Sprint” may not work as intended in Jira or the app.

Some Jira features are specific to a single project. This includes components and release versions. This means that Version swimlanes on the the User story map aren’t available on multi-project boards.

Settings in Jira such as Permissions, Notifications, Workflows and Issue Screens are configured for each project. If you’re troubleshooting problems with these on a multi-project board, you’ll need to check the settings for each project in the board.

Fields required by the board filter

Some board filters require a specific field. Teams working on part of a project(s) might use a board filter such as:

project = ABC AND component IN (iOS, Android)
project IN (ABC, XYZ) AND label = iOS

This means that newly-created issues can sometimes “disappear” from a board if they don’t yet meet the criteria. For example, a new issue with no component set will disappear from a board with a component in the board filter. You’ll see a warning message:

Screenshot of warning message reading Your issue is not currently visible. The issue is excluded by the agile board filter

Issues created on the User story map that don’t meet the filter criteria can sometimes disappear from the board before the Epic Link is set. This means the issue will be in the Jira project, but not on the Jira board OR in the epic.

Setting these fields as Required in Jira can help with this problem.

Easy Agile TeamRhythm will attempt to auto-fill fields, where possible. Only standard Jira fields such as component and label are auto-filled.

Whether the app is able to auto-fill will depend on if the board filter specifies one value, or multiple:

For project = ABC AND component = iOS, the app will add the component “IOS”.
For project = ABC AND component IN (iOS, Android), the app isn’t able to determine which component to add, so it can’t auto-fill it.

Board filter query errors

When opening the User story map, the app uses your board filter query to fetch issues from Jira. If Jira detects a problem with the query, it will return an error and the app will not load.

Screenshot of error message reading We cannot access your board's issues

These errors can often be fixed by editing the board filter query in Jira Cloud or Jira Data Center.

If you’re seeing an error when opening Easy Agile TeamRhythm on the User story map or Retrospective pages, check Help with common errors in Easy Agile TeamRhythm for more guidance.

Order, rank, and drag and drop

The issues and epics on the User story map are displayed in the same order as on your Jira Backlog and Sprint/Kanban Board. This is controlled by the ORDER BY clause in your board filter.

By default, boards will use ORDER BY Rank ASC. Using the Rank field means that you can manually set the order of issues on the Backlog in Jira with drag-and-drop. This is a common way of prioritizing and sequencing work.

This also enables you to reorder epics and issues in the User story map with drag-and-drop:

GIF of a portion of the user story map, dragging an epic one place to the right and an issue one place up

This updates the order in Jira by re-ranking the issues.

Epic order (vertically) in the Epics panel on the backlog

Epic order (horizontally) across the top of the backbone in the Story Map

Drag and drop errors

If your board does not use ORDER BY Rank, reordering issues in the User story map is disabled. You’ll see the following error message:

Screenshot of warning message reading Ranking is disabled, as the Filter Query for this board is not ordered by ascending Rank. Please check your filter configuration.

To enable drag-and-drop ranking, change this setting in your Board Configuration in Jira Cloud or Jira Data Center.

Drag-and-drop support is also limited when an additional hierarchy level (above epics) is displayed. reordering epics or third-level issues will show:

Screenshot of warning message reading Drag and drop is not currently supported when the third level hierarchy has been toggled on.

You can drag-and-drop the issues underneath your epics.

In the latest version of the app, third-level issues can be only reordered by right-clicking and using “Send right/left”.

On Jira Data Center, you’ll need to update to version 8.2.0 or later.

Alternatively, temporarily hiding the higher-level issues re-enables drag and drop.

Board Location (Jira Cloud only)

In Jira Cloud, each board also has a Location. This is typically a Jira project, but you can also store it in your personal profile.

The User Story Map and Retrospective options are displayed in the project sidebar. This means that they’re not visible when the board is NOT in a project:

Screenshot of Jira Cloud project sidebar showing the Retrospective and User Story Map options visible — Board in a project, with the project sidebar visible

Screenshot of the Jira Cloud sidebar for Henri Seymour's boards with no app links visible — Board in a personal profile

Workaround

The Retrospective page can also be accessed from the Backlog page in Jira:

Screenshot of a Jira Cloud sprint board with the Retrospective option in the header highlighted

Note that you can then switch to the User story map page in the Easy Agile TeamRhythm app from here:

Screenshot of the Easy Agile TeamRhythm app header with the User story map and Retrospective tabs — The User story map and Retrospective tabs in the Easy Agile TeamRhythm app

Quick Filters

A Quick Filter is a small snippet of Jira Query Language (JQL) that you can use to focus on a subset of issues. These are created and managed on each Jira board.

Quick Filters can be applied to epics, issues, or your third level hierarchy when using the in-app filters.

Create and manage Quick Filters in Board Configuration on Jira Cloud or Jira Data Center.

Required Issue fields

Some Jira configurations set Required Fields on issue creation. This is controlled by the Field Configuration applied to the project. Learn more about required fields in Jira Cloud or Jira Data Center.

This is NOT configured based on the Jira board, but will depend on the project you’re creating the issue in.

When creating an issue in Easy Agile TeamRhythm, an extra form will pop up if you need to add required fields. For example, where the component field is required:

Screenshot of Jira Create issue form with the Summary filled in and the empty Components field marked as required with a red asterisk