Issue Categories

Owned by Karina Zoin
Last updated: Jul 26, 2023
3 min read

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Issue categories in the Issue Matrix Panel

Issue Categories help organize and spot certain issues easily in an Issue Matrix panel. All Issue Matrix types support categories. Each issue can be assigned to only one category.

Using categories offers benefits such as:

  1. Improved organization: Define categories using JQL to organize issues based on different criteria.

  2. Quick identification: Categories are represented by colors. When an issue matches a category, a colored square appears on the left of its row in the Issue Matrix panel. Colored categories help you easily find and manage different types of issues and focus on the ones that require attention.

  3. Enhanced visibility: The visual highlighting of categories makes it easier to see how issues are spread out across the matrix panel.

For example, you can mark overdue deliverables in red and requests with upcoming due dates in yellow. This makes it easier to prioritize and take action on critical issues (check out the screeshot below to see how the Matrix panel will look with categories).

Configuring categories

To create a new category:

  1. Open the Issue Matrix configuration page.

  2. Go to the Data > Categories section.

  3. Enter a name for the category - it will appear as a tooltip when the user hovers over the colored cell in the Issue Matrix panel. You can’t use the same name for different categories.

  4. Enter JQL - you can use the extended JQL syntax.

  5. Choose a color - you can’t use the same color for different categories.

  6. Click Add Category.

Order of categories

When you create categories, they are listed in the order of creation. Categories are applied to issues by their order in the list - from the highest to the lowest.

To change the order of categories, simply drag and rearrange them in the Categories section.

If an issue matches multiple categories, only the first category in the list will be assigned to the issue.

Sorting the Issue Matrix by category

You can use the categories you’ve created to sort the issues in your matrix panel. Simply go to the issue view and click on the Cat title located above the Category column of the matrix panel. If you sort by descending category, the categorized issues will be shown first, followed by those without a category. With ascending sort, the issues without a category will come first, and the categorized ones will be below.

The order of issue categories in the matrix follows the order in which you set them up. For example, if you create categories for Not Started, In Progress, and Completed, they will appear in that order when you sort by category. The screenshot below shows the issues arranged by descending sort in this example.

Using empty JQL in category configuration

When configuring a category, leaving the JQL column empty means that all issues will be assigned to that category. However, if there are other categories listed before the one with an empty JQL, only issues that don't belong to those preceding categories will be assigned to the category with an empty JQL.

If you have multiple categories with empty JQL columns, all issues will be assigned to the category that is first in the list.

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