Statuses and the status workflow

The six statuses

The usual path is Draft → Open → In Progress → On Hold → Done → Archived, but it is not enforced: any status can move to any other, except out of Archived. Reopening a finished item is simply setting it back to Open or In Progress. An item whose type is Not defined yet is born Draft and stays there until a real type is chosen.

Adding spent time to a Draft or Open item moves it to In Progress automatically, and leaving Draft or Open fills an empty start date with today.

Projects, phases, tasks and subtasks

A status change on one level reaches the levels above and below it:

• A task pulls its phase and its project forward. Starting or finishing a task moves a not-started phase or project to In Progress; reopening a task wakes a Done phase or project; a task leaving Draft takes a Draft phase and project along. A subtask does the same to its task. History records these as status advanced from a sub-item.
• A project or a phase cannot finish while the items it contains are unfinished. Marking a phase Done or Archived with active items under it asks Mark all items as done? / Archive all items? and, if you confirm, cascades the status to them. Items already Done are left alone. Remember that a forgotten Draft subtask counts as unfinished.
• Walking a project or a phase back to Draft or Open when the items it contains have moved ahead asks what to do with them: Set all as draft / open (recommended) or Leave them with their current status. Leaving them is allowed, but the next change on one of those items will pull the phase or project forward again. On Hold never cascades.

Archiving any item asks for confirmation, because it cannot be undone.

An archived item cannot be changed

Once archived, an item is read-only for everyone, administrators included. Its fields, estimate, spent time and priority cannot change, the timer cannot run on it, and nothing can be added under it or moved into it. Reopening a done item under an archived one is refused too, since it would pull the archived item back to In Progress. You can still open it, comment on it, follow it, set reminders on it, and delete it.

When the status is locked

A greyed status chip with a tooltip means a start restriction holds: the start date has not arrived, a dependency has not cleared, or a phase or project above the item cannot start yet. The lock covers every status, not only In Progress, and only the status: the rest of the item stays editable. Users with the override start restrictions permission can change the status anyway.

Archived items are hidden from the list by default (use the Archived filter), limited to a recent window on the board and excluded from dashboard counts.