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Issue boards

DETAILS: Tier: Free, Premium, Ultimate Offering: GitLab.com, Self-managed, GitLab Dedicated

  • Milestones and iterations shown on issue cards introduced in GitLab 16.11.

The issue board is a software project management tool used to plan, organize, and visualize a workflow for a feature or product release.

You can use it as a Kanban or a Scrum board.

Issue boards pair issue tracking and project management, keeping everything together, so you can organize your workflow on a single platform.

Issue boards use issues and labels. Your issues appear as cards in vertical lists, organized by their assigned labels, milestones, or assignees.

Issue boards help you to visualize and manage your entire process in GitLab. You add your labels, and then create the corresponding list for your existing issues. When you're ready, you can drag your issue cards from one step to another one.

An issue board can show you the issues your team is working on, who is assigned to each, and where the issues are in the workflow.

To let your team members organize their own workflows, use multiple issue boards. This allows creating multiple issue boards in the same project.

GitLab issue board - Core

Different issue board features are available in different GitLab tiers:

Tier Number of project issue boards Number of group issue boards Configurable issue boards Assignee lists
Free Multiple 1 {dotted-circle} No {dotted-circle} No
Premium Multiple Multiple {check-circle} Yes {check-circle} Yes
Ultimate Multiple Multiple {check-circle} Yes {check-circle} Yes

Read more about GitLab Enterprise features for issue boards.

GitLab issue board - Premium

Watch a video presentation (April 2020) of the issue board feature.

Multiple issue boards

Multiple issue boards allow for more than one issue board for:

  • A project in all tiers
  • A group in the Premium and Ultimate tier

This is great for large projects with more than one team or when a repository hosts the code of multiple products.

Using the search box at the top of the menu, you can filter the listed boards.

When you have ten or more boards available, a Recent section is also shown in the menu, with shortcuts to your last four visited boards.

Multiple issue boards

When you're revisiting an issue board in a project or group with multiple boards, GitLab automatically loads the last board you visited.

Create an issue board

Prerequisites:

  • You must have at least the Reporter role for the project.

To create a new issue board:

  1. In the upper-left corner of the issue board page, select the dropdown list with the current board name.
  2. Select Create new board.
  3. Enter the new board's name and select its scope: milestone, labels, assignee, or weight.

Delete an issue board

Prerequisites:

  • You must have at least the Reporter role for the project.

To delete the currently active issue board:

  1. In the upper-right corner of the issue board page, select Configure board ({settings}).
  2. Select Delete board.
  3. Select Delete to confirm.

Issue boards use cases

You can tailor GitLab issue boards to your own preferred workflow. Here are some common use cases for issue boards.

For examples of using issue boards along with epics, issue health status, and scoped labels for various Agile frameworks, see:

Use cases for a single issue board

With the GitLab Flow you can discuss proposals in issues, label them, and organize and prioritize them with issue boards.

For example, let's consider this simplified development workflow:

  1. You have a repository that hosts your application's codebase, and your team actively contributes code.
  2. Your backend team starts working on a new implementation, gathers feedback and approval, and passes it over to the frontend team.
  3. When frontend is complete, the new feature is deployed to a staging environment to be tested.
  4. When successful, it's deployed to production.

If you have the labels Backend, Frontend, Staging, and Production, and an issue board with a list for each, you can:

  • Visualize the entire flow of implementations since the beginning of the development life cycle until deployed to production.
  • Prioritize the issues in a list by moving them vertically.
  • Move issues between lists to organize them according to the labels you've set.
  • Add multiple issues to lists in the board by selecting one or more existing issues.

issue card moving

Use cases for multiple issue boards

With multiple issue boards, each team can have their own board to organize their workflow individually.

Scrum team

With multiple issue boards, each team has one board. Now you can move issues through each part of the process. For example: To Do, Doing, and Done.

Organization of topics

Create lists to order issues by topic and quickly change them between topics or groups, such as between UX, Frontend, and Backend. The changes are reflected across boards, as changing lists updates the labels on each issue accordingly.

Issue board workflow between teams

For example, suppose we have a UX team with an issue board that contains:

  • To Do
  • Doing
  • Frontend

When finished with something, they move the card to Frontend. The Frontend team's board looks like:

  • Frontend
  • Doing
  • Done

Cards finished by the UX team automatically appear in the Frontend column when they are ready for them.

For a tutorial how to set up your boards in a similar way with scoped labels, see Tutorial: Set up issue boards for team hand-off.

NOTE: For a broader use case, see the blog post What is GitLab Flow?. For a real use case example, you can read why Codepen decided to adopt issue boards to improve their workflow with multiple boards.

Quick assignments

To quickly assign issues to your team members:

  1. Create assignee lists for each team member.
  2. Drag an issue onto the team member's list.

Issue board terminology

An issue board represents a unique view of your issues. It can have multiple lists with each list consisting of issues represented by cards.

A list is a column on the issue board that displays issues matching certain attributes. In addition to the default "Open" and "Closed" lists, each additional list shows issues matching your chosen label, assignee, or milestone. On the top of each list you can see the number of issues that belong to it. Types of lists include:

  • Open (default): all open issues that do not belong to one of the other lists. Always appears as the leftmost list.
  • Closed (default): all closed issues. Always appears as the rightmost list.
  • Label list: all open issues for a label.
  • Assignee list: all open issues assigned to a user.
  • Milestone list: all open issues for a milestone.

A Card is a box on a list, and it represents an issue. You can drag cards from one list to another to change their label, assignee, or milestone. The information you can see on a card includes:

  • Issue title
  • Associated labels
  • Issue number
  • Assignee
  • Weight
  • Milestone
  • Iteration (in the Premium and Ultimate tier)
  • Due date
  • Time tracking estimate
  • Health status

Ordering issues in a list

Prerequisites:

  • You must have at least the Reporter role for the project.

When an issue is created, the system assigns a relative order value that is greater than the maximum value of that issue's project or root group. This means the issue is at the bottom of any issue list that it appears in.

When you visit a board, issues appear ordered in any list. You're able to change that order by dragging the issues. The changed order is saved, so that anybody who visits the same board later sees the reordering, with some exceptions.

Any time you drag and reorder the issue, its relative order value changes accordingly. Then, any time that issue appears in any board, the ordering is done according to the updated relative order value. If a user in your GitLab instance drags issue A above issue B, the ordering is maintained when these two issues are subsequently loaded in any board in the same instance. This could be a different project board or a different group board, for example.

This ordering also affects issue lists. Changing the order in an issue board changes the ordering in an issue list, and vice versa.

Focus mode

To enable or disable focus mode, in the upper-right corner, select Toggle focus mode ({maximize}). In focus mode, the navigation UI is hidden, allowing you to focus on issues in the board.

Group issue boards

Accessible at the group navigation level, a group issue board offers the same features as a project-level board. It can display issues from all projects that fall under the group and its descendant subgroups.

Users on GitLab Free can use a single group issue board.

GitLab Enterprise features for issue boards

GitLab issue boards are available on the GitLab Free tier, but some advanced functionality is present in higher tiers only.

Configurable issue boards

DETAILS: Tier: Premium, Ultimate Offering: GitLab.com, Self-managed, GitLab Dedicated

An issue board can be associated with a milestone, labels, assignee, weight, and current iteration, which automatically filter the board issues accordingly. This allows you to create unique boards according to your team's need.

Create scoped board

You can define the scope of your board when creating it or by selecting the Configure board ({settings}) button. After a milestone, iteration, assignee, or weight is assigned to an issue board, you can no longer filter through these in the search bar. To do that, you need to remove the desired scope (for example, milestone, assignee, or weight) from the issue board.

If you don't have editing permission in a board, you're still able to see the configuration by selecting Board configuration ({settings}).

Watch a video presentation of the configurable issue board feature.

Sum of issue weights

DETAILS: Tier: Premium, Ultimate Offering: GitLab.com, Self-managed, GitLab Dedicated

The top of each list indicates the sum of issue weights for the issues that belong to that list. This is useful when using boards for capacity allocation, especially in combination with assignee lists.

issue board summed weights

Assignee lists

DETAILS: Tier: Premium, Ultimate Offering: GitLab.com, Self-managed, GitLab Dedicated

As in a regular list showing all issues with a chosen label, you can add an assignee list that shows all issues assigned to a user. You can have a board with both label lists and assignee lists.

Prerequisites:

  • You must have at least the Reporter role for the project.

To add an assignee list:

  1. Select Create list.
  2. Select Assignee.
  3. In the dropdown list, select a user.
  4. Select Add to board.

Now that the assignee list is added, you can assign or unassign issues to that user by moving issues to and from an assignee list. To remove an assignee list, just as with a label list, select the trash icon.

Assignee lists

Milestone lists

DETAILS: Tier: Premium, Ultimate Offering: GitLab.com, Self-managed, GitLab Dedicated

You can create milestone lists that filter issues by the assigned milestone, giving you more freedom and visibility on the issue board.

Prerequisites:

  • You must have at least the Reporter role for the project.

To add a milestone list:

  1. Select Create list.
  2. Select Milestone.
  3. In the dropdown list, select a milestone.
  4. Select Add to board.

Like the assignee lists, you're able to drag issues to and from a milestone list to manipulate the milestone of the dragged issues. As in other list types, select the trash icon to remove a list.

Milestone lists

Iteration lists

DETAILS: Tier: Premium, Ultimate Offering: GitLab.com, Self-managed, GitLab Dedicated

You can create lists of issues in an iteration.

Prerequisites:

  • You must have at least the Reporter role for the project.

To add an iteration list:

  1. Select Create list.
  2. Select Iteration.
  3. In the dropdown list, select an iteration.
  4. Select Add to board.

Like the milestone lists, you're able to drag issues to and from a iteration list to manipulate the iteration of the dragged issues.

Iteration lists

Group issues in swimlanes

DETAILS: Tier: Premium, Ultimate Offering: GitLab.com, Self-managed, GitLab Dedicated

With swimlanes you can visualize issues grouped by epic. Your issue board keeps all the other features, but with a different visual organization of issues. This feature is available both at the project and group level.

For a video overview, see Epics Swimlanes Walkthrough - 13.6 (November 2020).

Prerequisites:

  • You must have at least the Reporter role for the project.

To group issues by epic in an issue board:

  1. Select View options ({preferences}).
  2. Select Epic swimlanes.

Epics Swimlanes

To edit an issue without leaving this view, select the issue card (not its title), and a sidebar appears on the right. There you can see and edit the issue's:

  • Title
  • Assignees
  • Epic
  • Milestone
  • Time tracking value (view only)
  • Due date
  • Labels
  • Weight
  • Notifications setting

You can also drag issues to change their position and epic assignment:

  • To reorder an issue, drag it to the new position within a list.
  • To assign an issue to another epic, drag it to the epic's horizontal lane.
  • To unassign an issue from an epic, drag it to the Issues with no epic assigned lane.
  • To move an issue to another epic and another list, at the same time, drag the issue diagonally.

Drag issues between swimlanes

Work in progress limits

DETAILS: Tier: Premium, Ultimate Offering: GitLab.com, Self-managed, GitLab Dedicated

You can set a work in progress (WIP) limit for each issue list on an issue board. When a limit is set, the list's header shows the number of issues in the list and the soft limit of issues. A line in the list separates items within the limit from those in excess of the limit. You cannot set a WIP limit on the default lists (Open and Closed).

Examples:

  • When you have a list with four issues and a limit of five, the header shows 4/5. If you exceed the limit, the current number of issues is shown in red.
  • You have a list with five issues with a limit of five. When you move another issue to that list, the list's header displays 6/5, with the six shown in red. The work in progress line is shown before the sixth issue.

Prerequisites:

  • You must have at least the Reporter role for the project.

To set a WIP limit for a list, in an issue board:

  1. On the top of the list you want to edit, select Edit list settings ({settings}). The list settings sidebar opens on the right.
  2. Next to Work in progress limit, select Edit.
  3. Enter the maximum number of issues.
  4. Press Enter to save.

Blocked issues

DETAILS: Tier: Premium, Ultimate Offering: GitLab.com, Self-managed, GitLab Dedicated

If an issue is blocked by another issue, an icon appears next to its title to indicate its blocked status.

When you hover over the blocked icon ({entity-blocked}), a detailed information popover is displayed.

Blocked issues

Actions you can take on an issue board

Edit an issue

You can edit an issue without leaving the board view. To open the right sidebar, select an issue card (not its title).

Prerequisites:

  • You must have at least the Reporter role for the project.

You can edit the following issue attributes in the right sidebar:

Additionally, you can also see the time tracking value.

Create a new list

To create a new list:

  1. Scroll to the right of the board, and then select New list. The new list panel opens.

    creating a new list in an issue board

  2. Choose the label, user, milestone or iteration to base the new list on.

  3. Select Add to board.

The new list is inserted at the right end of the lists, before Closed. To move and reorder lists, drag them around.

Remove a list

Removing a list doesn't have any effect on issues and labels, as it's just the list view that's removed. You can always create it again later if you need.

Prerequisites:

  • You must have at least the Reporter role for the project.

To remove a list from an issue board:

  1. On the top of the list you want to remove, select Edit list settings ({settings}). The list settings sidebar opens on the right.
  2. Select Remove list.
  3. On the confirmation dialog, select Remove list again.

Add issues to a list

Prerequisites:

  • You must have at least the Reporter role for the project.

If your board is scoped to one or more attributes, go to the issues you want to add and apply the same attributes as your board scope.

For example, to add an issue to a list scoped to the Doing label, in a group issue board:

  1. Go to an issue in the group or one of the subgroups or projects.
  2. Add the Doing label.

The issue should now show in the Doing list on your issue board.

Remove an issue from a list

When an issue should no longer belong to a list, you can remove it.

Prerequisites:

  • You must have at least the Reporter role for the project.

The steps depend on the scope of the list:

  1. To open the right sidebar, select the issue card.
  2. Remove what's keeping the issue in the list. If it's a label list, remove the label. If it's an assignee list, unassign the user.

Filter issues

You can use the filters on top of your issue board to show only the results you want. It's similar to the filtering used in the issue tracker.

Prerequisites:

  • You must have at least the Reporter role for the project.

You can filter by the following:

  • Assignee
  • Author
  • Epic
  • Iteration
  • Label
  • Milestone
  • My Reaction
  • Release
  • Type (issue/incident)
  • Weight

Filtering issues in a group board

When filtering issues in a group board, keep this behavior in mind:

  • Milestones: you can filter by the milestones belonging to the group and its descendant groups.
  • Labels: you can only filter by the labels belonging to the group but not its descendant groups.

When you edit issues individually using the right sidebar, you can additionally select the milestones and labels from the project that the issue is from.

Move issues and lists

You can move issues and lists by dragging them.

Prerequisites:

  • You must have at least the Reporter role for a project in GitLab.

To move an issue, select the issue card and drag it to another position in its current list or into a different list. Learn about possible effects in Dragging issues between lists.

To move a list, select its top bar, and drag it horizontally. You can't move the Open and Closed lists, but you can hide them when editing an issue board.

Move an issue to the start of the list

You can move issues to the top of the list with a menu shortcut.

Your issue is moved to the top of the list even if other issues are hidden by a filter.

Prerequisites:

  • You must at least have the Reporter role for the project.

To move an issue to the start of the list:

  1. In an issue board, hover over the card of the issue you want to move.
  2. Select Card options ({ellipsis_v}), then Move to start of list.

Move an issue to the end of the list

You can move issues to the bottom of the list with a menu shortcut.

Your issue is moved to the bottom of the list even if other issues are hidden by a filter.

Prerequisites:

  • You must at least have the Reporter role for the project.

To move an issue to the end of the list:

  1. In an issue board, hover over the card of the issue you want to move.
  2. Select Card options ({ellipsis_v}), then Move to end of list.

Dragging issues between lists

To move an issue to another list, select the issue card and drag it onto that list.

When you drag issues between lists, the result is different depending on the source list and the target list.

To Open To Closed To label B list To assignee Bob list
From Open - Close issue Add label B Assign Bob
From Closed Reopen issue - Reopen issue and add label B Reopen issue and assign Bob
From label A list Remove label A Close issue Remove label A and add label B Assign Bob
From assignee Alice list Unassign Alice Close issue Add label B Unassign Alice and assign Bob

Multi-select issue cards

  • Moved behind a feature flag named board_multi_select in GitLab 14.0. Disabled by default.

FLAG: On self-managed GitLab, by default this feature is not available. To make it available, ask an administrator to enable the feature flag named board_multi_select. On GitLab.com and GitLab Dedicated, this feature is not available. This feature is not ready for production use.

You can select multiple issue cards, then drag the group to another position within the list, or to another list. This makes it faster to reorder many issues at once.

Prerequisites:

  • You must have at least the Reporter role for the project.

To select and move multiple cards:

  1. Select each card with Control+Click on Windows or Linux, or Command+Click on MacOS.
  2. Drag one of the selected cards to another position or list and all selected cards are moved.

Multi-select Issue Cards

Tips

A few things to remember:

  • Moving an issue between lists removes the label from the list it came from and adds the label from the list it goes to.
  • An issue can exist in multiple lists if it has more than one label.
  • Lists are populated with issues automatically if the issues are labeled.
  • Selecting the issue title inside a card takes you to that issue.
  • Selecting a label inside a card quickly filters the entire issue board and show only the issues from all lists that have that label.
  • For performance and visibility reasons, each list shows the first 20 issues by default. If you have more than 20 issues, start scrolling down and the next 20 appear.

Troubleshooting issue boards

There was a problem fetching users on group issue board when filtering by Author or Assignee

If you get a banner with There was a problem fetching users error when filtering by author or assignee on group issue board, make sure that you are added as a member to the current group. Non-members do not have permission to list group members when filtering by author or assignee on issue boards.

To fix this error, you should add all of your users to the top-level group with at least the Guest role.

Use Rails console to fix issue boards not loading and timing out

If you see issue board not loading and timing out in UI, use Rails console to call the Issue Rebalancing service to fix it:

  1. Start a Rails console session.

  2. Run these commands:

    p = Project.find_by_full_path('<username-or-group>/<project-name>')

Issues::RelativePositionRebalancingService.new(p.root_namespace.all_projects).execute

  3. To exit the Rails console, type quit.