Manage work item workflows
As a Jira administrator, you need to activate workflows before your teams can use them to streamline project work. To activate a workflow, include it in a workflow scheme and associate that workflow scheme with a project. You can also import and export workflows to share them across teams.
This page is for company-managed projects
To check whether your project is team-managed or company-managed, select More actions (•••) next to the project name in either the header or the sidebar. At the bottom of the menu that opens, your project details will be shown.
More about the difference between company-managed and team-managed projects.
Activate a workflow
All workflows are inactive until you associate them with a workflow scheme, which can then be associated with a project. To activate a workflow:
Select Settings (), then Work items.
Under WORKFLOWS, select Workflow schemes to see a list of active and inactive schemes.
Create a workflow scheme or edit an active workflow scheme. (Select the Active or Inactive headings to expand and collapse the list of workflows.)
Add your workflow to the scheme. Read about configuring workflow schemes.
Next, you will associate the workflow scheme with your project.
Associate a workflow scheme with a project
To finish activating your workflow, associate the workflow scheme it's in with a project. If a work type is not defined in the project's work type scheme, that specific workflow is not used.
Select the project you want to associate your workflow scheme to.
Next to your service project’s name in the sidebar, select More actions (•••), then Project settings.
Select Workflows. You'll see which workflow scheme the project currently uses.
Select Switch Scheme and select the relevant workflow scheme from the Scheme list.
Select Associate to begin the migration process. Each work item needs to have a valid status, so you may need to assign statuses to a select number of work items after you switch workflow schemes.
A Jira project must always be associated with a workflow scheme, since all work items must move through a workflow. To disassociate a custom workflow scheme from a project, simply associate that project to the default workflow scheme instead.
Import a workflow
This feature is being discontinued.
View the JAC work item or learn how to copy data from one instance of an Atlassian app to another.
Exporting a workflow
For security reasons, only site admins can export workflows from Jira. Learn more about exporting workflows.
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