Are you on the right help page?
The following information only applies to team-managed projects.
To check which type project you need help with, look at the bottom of your project’s left-hand sidebar:
If you see an icon stating You’re in a team-managed project with Give feedback and Learn more menu items, you're in a team-managed project.
If you don't, you're in a company-managed project. Check out our company-managed project documentation.
Issue types distinguish different types of work in unique ways, and help you identify, categorize, and report on your team’s work across your Jira site. They can help your team build more structure into your working process.
By default, team-managed projects label all your tasks as either Task, if you chose to start with a Kanban project, or Story, if you chose to start with a Scrum project.
To view your project’s issue types: From your project's sidebar, select Project settings > Issue types.
Multiple issue types help you search and sort the work your team takes on, track the progress of specific types of work, even estimate how well your team responds to bugs or how fast they complete larger initiatives.
You can customize your issue types to match any method of project management you want. We recommend agile methodologies, and we provide suggested issue types to help you classify tasks to work in an agile way.
You must have the administrator role in your project to do the things described on this page. Learn more about team-managed project roles.
Add suggested issue types to your team-managed software project
You can customize your issue types to match any method of project management you want. Jira Software recommends agile methodologies, and we provide suggested issue types to help you classify tasks to work in an agile way. Learn more about agile and how to run an agile software development project.
To add suggested issue types:
- From your project's sidebar, select Project settings > Issue types.
- From the sidebar, select + Add issue type.
- Choose one of the suggested issue types from the list.
- Select Add.
You can add up to 30 issue types.
Your new issue type appears in the sidebar, alongside the other issue types your project uses. You can set an issue's type when you create a new issue in the project or on a board.
By default, team-managed software projects come with these suggested issue types:
Parent issue types
Epic. Agile teams use epics to track larger sections of work composed of smaller tasks, bugs and user stories. Jira uses the suggested epic issue type to power other features in team-managed projects, like roadmaps and reports. To use these features, you must use the suggested Epic issue type (and avoid creating your own custom issue type called "Epic"). Learn more about managing epics.
Standard issue types
Bug. Agile teams use the bug issue type to track problems with their software, such as user interface discrepancies, broken functionality, or other niggles experience by users.
Task. You can use the task issue type to categorize miscellaneous tasks – like technical investigations, administrative work, or other project-adjacent tasks.
Story. Agile teams use stories to capture feature requests and development work expressed as user goals.
Subtask issue types
Subtask. Sometimes work ends up being more complicated than you expected. Subtasks let you break down a bug, task, or story into smaller discreet tasks. Jira uses the suggested subtask issue type to power other features in team-managed projects like swimlanes on the board, and progress tracking while viewing an issue. To use these features, you must use the suggested Subtask issue type (and avoid creating your own custom issue type called “Subtask”). In team-managed projects, subtasks are called “children” of standard issues like bugs, tasks, or stories. Learn more about managing subtasks.
Create custom issue types in your team-managed software project
You can create your own issue types to truly customize how you track your project and the information you collect to carry out different types of work.
To add your own issue types:
- From your project's sidebar, select Project settings > Issue types.
- From the sidebar, select + Add issue type.
- Select Create issue type.
- Give your issue type a name, description, and an icon.
- Select Create.
You can add up to 30 issue types.
Your new issue type appears in the sidebar, alongside the other issue types your project uses. You can set an issue's type when you create a new issue in the project or on a board.
Currently, you can only create custom "standard" issue types. You can't create custom "parent" or "subtask" issue types.
Edit issue types in your team-managed software project
Change an issue type's name
To edit the name of your issue type:
- From your project's sidebar, select Project settings > Issue types.
- From the sidebar, select the issue type you want to edit.
- Click the issue type's name and edit it how you like.
- Click Save changes.
Your issue type's name updates everywhere in Jira.
Change an issue type's description
To edit the description of your issue type:
- From your project's sidebar, select Project settings > Issue types.
- From the sidebar, select the issue type you want to edit.
- Click the issue type's description and edit it how you like.
- Click Save changes.
Your issue type's description updates everywhere in Jira.
Change an issue type's icon
Your issue type’s icon helps people scan and quickly distinguish between different types of tasks when they appear on your board, in search results, or in reports.
To edit the icon of your issue type:
- From your project's sidebar, select Project settings > Issue types.
- From the sidebar, select the issue type you want to edit.
- Click the issue type's icon.
- Upload a custom image or choose one from the list.
- Click Select.
Your issue type's icon updates everywhere in Jira.
Change an issue type's workflow
To edit the workflow of your issue type:
From your project's sidebar, select Project settings > Issue types.
From the sidebar, select the issue type you want to edit.
Select Edit workflow.
Adjust the workflow as needed.
To save your changes, select Update workflow.
From the dropdown, deselect lozenges to specify which issue type the workflow will apply to.
Select Save.
Mark an issue type’s required fields
To mark required fields for an issue type:
From your project's sidebar, select Project settings > Issue types.
From the sidebar, select the issue type you want to edit.
Select the Required checkbox for any fields you want to make mandatory.
Select Save changes.
Once saved, new issues of that type can’t be created unless the required field is filled out.
Restrict access to an issue type in your team-managed software project
Some tasks may contain sensitive or confidential information. For example, to get their job done, software teams may require access to personally identifiable information (PII) or sensitive financial data. You can easily create an issue type to estimate, prioritize, and track this type of sensitive or confidential work. And, you can restrict who sees that type of work to specific roles in your project.
To restrict newly-created issues:
From your project's sidebar, select Project settings > Issue types.
From the sidebar, select the issue type that you want to restrict access to.
Choose the lock icon at the top-right of the issue type.
Select the roles that can view new issues by default from the dropdown.
Select Restrict.
Any newly create issues are restricted to the roles you’ve nominated. Previously-created issues are unaffected.
Roles that have permission to Restrict any issue can change an issue’s restriction while viewing it. Learn more roles and permissions.
Deleting a custom role that has associated issue restrictions will make the issues unaccessible to the role. For instance, if there is a custom role Developer, and the issues are only restricted to this role, then the issues become unaccessible when the role is deleted. If the issues are restricted to a set of roles which includes Developer, then the issues can be accessed by other roles when Developer role is deleted.
Delete issue types from your team-managed software project
To delete an issue type:
- From your project's sidebar, select Project settings > Issue types.
- From the sidebar, select the issue type you want to delete.
- Select … > Delete issue type.
If you have issues that use that type, we'll warn you about them. You'll have to change their type to something that you actually use in the project, or else things can break. Don't worry, Jira will walk you through how to update those issues, if needed.