> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.totallycalculated.com/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.totallycalculated.com/workspace-for-jira/using-workspace-for-jira.md). # Using Workspace for Jira ## Workspace for Jira Workspace for Jira turns work spread across many Jira projects into a single visual map you can expand, filter, schedule, and ask questions about — without leaving Jira. It is built for people who own more than one project: engineering and delivery managers, project managers, Scrum Masters, PMOs, and operations teams. **New here?** Start with Getting started. **Something not behaving as you expect?** Jump to Troubleshooting — it covers the questions people ask most. **Setting the product up for a team?** See For administrators. *** ### Getting started #### 1. Open Workspace Open **Apps** in the Jira top navigation and choose **Workspace**. That is the main product — a full-screen canvas called the **Work Map**. > **Note.** Workspace also appears in the sidebar of individual Jira projects. That is an older single-project screen called *Epics Summary*, not the Work Map. If you landed there and saw one project's epics in a list, you are in the wrong place — go to **Apps → Workspace** instead. See The project page. If you see **"No Valid License."**, the app is installed but the site does not have an active licence. Contact your Jira administrator. #### 2. Open or create a workspace A **workspace** is a named set of Jira projects. Workspaces are shared with everyone on your Jira site, so a workspace your colleague built is a workspace you can open. When you open the Work Map it picks a workspace for you automatically: the one you had open last, then your personal default, then the only one that exists. To see all of them, or to make a new one, open the **maps library** from the Work Map chrome. You can set any workspace as your **personal default**, which only affects you. #### 3. Add projects At the bottom of the project column, click **Add project** and start typing. The search covers every project you can see in Jira, and each result tells you where that project already stands: | Label | Meaning | | ---------------- | -------------------------------------------------------- | | **Add** | Not on this workspace yet | | **Add to view** | On the workspace, but not in the view you are looking at | | **In view** | Already visible here | | **On workspace** | On the workspace but filtered out of this view | Projects appear on the map the moment you click, so you can add several in a row without waiting. Saving happens in the background. While the box is empty, you may see a short **Recent** list of projects you have opened in Jira recently that are not on the workspace yet. Typing always takes priority. Close the panel with **Done**. It also closes on its own after about ten seconds of inactivity, or as soon as you search the map or expand something. If a save fails, the project stays on the map with a quiet **Couldn't save · Retry** underneath. If you try to leave or reload while saves are still in flight, your browser will warn you. #### 4. Expand the tree Click a project to open its children in the next column. Click again to collapse. Each level of the hierarchy gets its own column, so a workspace configured as **Project → Epic → Task** puts projects on the left, their epics beside them, and tasks beside those. Lines connect each parent to its children. Your administrator decides the levels, so yours may differ — up to six levels deep. #### 5. Try the views Above the map you will see **view pills**. A view is a saved slice of the same workspace: a subset of projects, particular issue types, and whether finished work is hidden. Click a pill to switch. Nothing reloads, and switching a view never changes the workspace itself. *** ### Everyday use #### Finding something Use the search box in the map chrome. Type an issue key such as `ABC-123` for a direct hit, or type words to search summaries. What makes this different from Jira search: **the tree opens the path to what you found.** Instead of a flat result list, the map expands each parent down to the match and highlights the first one. Matches stay visible even when the current view's filters would normally hide them. Search covers the projects relevant to your current view, and returns up to 25 results. #### Creating work At the top of any expanded parent's children column, **Add child** creates the next level down under that parent — an epic under a project, a task under an epic, and so on. You can pick the issue type and keep the dialog open to create several in a row. If you do not see **Add child**, your administrator has turned it off for that level. See Troubleshooting. #### Updating work Cards carry an **Edit** action that opens a small modal containing the fields on that card — text, dates, numbers, priority, status, and people. You never have to open the full issue page to change a due date. Clicking a card's summary opens the issue in Jira's own issue modal when you need the full detail. Where your administrator has enabled it, you can also **drag cards** to reorder them among their siblings or to move an issue under a different parent. #### Hiding noise **Hide completed work** is part of each view and is normally on, so finished items stay out of the way. **Hide empty projects** appears under **Add project** when some — but not all — of the projects in your view have nothing in them. It tells you how many it will hide, and the choice is remembered in your browser for you alone. #### Expanding and collapsing in bulk The arrows at the edge of a column's controls expand or collapse everything at that level: **←** collapses, **→** expands. They apply to that column only. They appear only when there is something worth doing — at least two items in that column need to have children before the arrows show, and they wait until the counts have loaded. So an empty column simply will not offer them. #### Counting what is underneath Each parent can show a **trail count** of what sits below it. Your administrator picks what it counts per level: | Mode | What it counts | | -------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------- | | **Next level only** | Just the level directly below — epics under a project | | **Connected items** | The next level plus deeper items that appear out of order | | **Level after next** | Skips a level — tasks under a project, ignoring epics | Projects normally use **level after next**, which answers "how much actual work sits under this project?" rather than "how many epics does it have?" That is worth knowing, because it explains why a project with epics can still show a count of zero. *** ### Views Views live on the workspace, and each one holds four things: | Setting | Behavior | | ------------------ | --------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **Name** | What appears on the pill | | **Projects** | Which projects show. Empty means all of them | | **Issue types** | Which types show. Empty means whatever the hierarchy defines | | **Hide completed** | On by default, using the completed-work rule your admin set site-wide | The important distinction: a view **filters** the workspace, it does not change it. Removing a project from a view leaves it on the workspace and in every other view. #### Editing views on the canvas Click **Manage N projects** under the project column to edit the view you are in, or **Create view** to start a new one. Either opens the views workbench directly on the map. When you enter it, the trees collapse, any open timeline closes, and every project on the workspace becomes a card you can click to include or exclude — a checkmark means it is in. The view pills grow into editable tabs so you can move between views while you work, and a small form sits on the right with the view's name, its **Hide completed** toggle, **Adjust tickets included**, and the actions **Create new view**, **Set as default view**, **Delete this view**, and **Done**. **There is no Save button.** Renaming, project selection, hide-completed, and issue types all persist as you go, and switching tabs loses nothing. A new view starts as a copy of the one you were looking at. A filtered view has to keep at least one project. > **One thing to be careful about.** The **All projects** tab represents the whole workspace, not a filter. Unselecting a project there **removes it from the workspace entirely**, and it leaves every view. Those removals apply when you click **Done**, and you will be asked to confirm first. *** ### Timeline When your administrator has configured a timeline level, projects offer **Show timeline**. The timeline is not a separate screen. The same cards you were looking at slide onto a date grid, and the rest of the map stays where it was. **Reading it.** A red line marks today, and quieter lines mark the first of each month. The desk fills the width of your screen. Scale controls sit above the project: **Fit** sizes the view to the work, and **Day**, **Week**, and **Month** hold a fixed density instead. There is always a visible scrollbar under the desk, and the trackpad pans sideways. **Changing dates.** Drag a bar to move it, which shifts start and due together. Drag its edges to change one end. A dashed guide follows the date you are landing on. Where ranking allows it, you can also drag bars up and down to reorder them. **Work without dates** sits at today, sized to the default duration your admin set, and is labelled **No start date** or **No due date** in red. You cannot move a bar until it has both dates, and an edge only offers a handle once that date exists — so those labels are telling you what to fill in, not reporting an error. **Leaving.** **Hide timeline** closes the desk and leaves the project expanded on the tree. Clicking the project card closes the desk and collapses the project. Either way, the timeline level stays collapsed when you come back, and expanding shows the tree again until you choose **Show timeline**. *** ### Workspace Assistant (Rovo) Workspace ships a Rovo agent called the **Workspace Assistant**. It works on the workspace you have open, so keep the Work Map on screen when you ask it something. Things worth asking: * *Give me a status report* — projects ordered by urgency: overdue first, then due tomorrow, then this week, then high priority * *Summarize visible work* — counts of what is overdue, due this week, and assigned to you * *Add a project to this workspace* / *Remove a project from this workspace* — the map updates live, with no refresh needed * *Where is project X?* — tells you whether it is visible, on the workspace but hidden by your view, or not there at all * *What filters are currently active?* — a plain-language description of the view you are in * *What can Workspace for Jira do?* — a straight answer about the product's capabilities * *Update issue due dates and assignees* — it proposes the changes and waits for you to confirm before touching anything **What it will not do**, deliberately: it changes only **status, due date, summary, and assignee** and nothing else, it will not redesign your views or filters, and it will not create or delete Jira projects. If you ask for something the product genuinely cannot do, it says so rather than improvising. If it reports that it has no view context, the Work Map is not open — open it and ask again. *** ### Time roll-ups Where your administrator has added one, a project card carries a button — **Pull Logged Time** by default. Click it and Workspace adds up **logged work** from Jira worklogs for a chosen month, across whichever issues the configured query selects. The answer appears as a small tile on the card, with when it was last updated and a **↻** to refresh. Refreshing keeps the old number on screen while the new one loads. The **✕** in the corner clears it and puts the button back. Two things to know: * **The number is stored in your browser**, so it survives a refresh but does not follow you to another computer or show up for your colleagues. * **It expires.** Your administrator sets how many days a result is kept — five by default — counted from the last refresh. When it lapses the tile disappears and the button returns. That is expected, not a fault. If the tile says **Partial**, some matched issues have worklogs you do not have permission to read, so the total excludes them. Roll-ups cover up to 200 issues; beyond that your administrator needs to narrow the query. Where a click destination has been configured, the result is clickable and opens the underlying query, a project page, or a custom link in a new tab. *** ### Ambient Insight When the map is sitting still and there is genuinely empty space on the canvas, a small tip may fade in — a count, a short list of items, or how many projects have something matching. It respects what you are doing. It never appears on first load, only after the map has settled and you have paused. Scrolling does not disturb it, but expanding or collapsing something dissolves it until things are quiet again. It stays out of the way on dense maps, over the timeline, and while you are editing views. Its text is selectable, so you can copy a count out of it. Insights reflect the view you are in. Your administrator decides whether the feature is on and what it reports. *** ### Working with others Workspaces are shared. When someone adds or removes a project, reorders things, or changes views — or when Rovo does it on their behalf — **your map updates without a refresh.** As a safety net the map also refreshes itself every twenty minutes, for up to six cycles. Refreshing manually resets that counter. **Last refreshed** in the chrome tells you where you stand. *** ### Troubleshooting #### A project looks empty, but I know it has work in it Most often the **trail count mode** explains it. Projects usually count the *level after next* — tasks, not epics — so a project holding epics that contain no tasks legitimately counts zero. Next, check whether your view is hiding it: **Hide completed work** is on by default, so a project whose work is all finished looks empty. When a project genuinely has nothing to show, clicking it does not open a column. Instead a **Go to project** action appears beside it, which takes you into Jira. Click the project again to put it away. #### Add child is missing on a card Your administrator controls this per level under **Hierarchy & card layouts**, and **Allow add children** is off for that level. This can leave you with no way to create anything — for example, if epics cannot be added under a project and there are no epics yet, there is nowhere to put a task either. There is no workaround in the product today; ask your administrator to enable creation for that level. #### A project is on the workspace but I cannot see it Your view is filtering it out. Click **Manage N projects**, tick the project, and click **Done**. You can confirm this by asking the Workspace Assistant where the project is — it distinguishes "hidden by your view" from "not on the workspace". #### The children counts flickered when I switched views Expected. Counts are cached per view for your session, so the first time you land on a view they are fetched and briefly refresh. Going back to a view you have already seen updates the number in place without blanking. #### I removed a project from a view and it vanished from everywhere You were most likely on the **All projects** tab, which represents workspace membership rather than a filter. Unselecting there removes the project from the workspace and therefore from every view. Add it back with **Add project** — nothing happened to the Jira project itself. #### My time roll-up number disappeared Results are kept for a set number of days, five by default, from the last refresh. Once that passes the tile clears and the button returns. Click it again for a fresh number. #### I cannot drag a bar on the timeline A bar only moves when it has both a start and a due date, and an edge only offers a handle for a date that is actually set. The red **No start date** and **No due date** labels show which one is missing. #### Someone changed the workspace and I did not see it Changes normally arrive live. If they have not, use manual refresh — and check **Last refreshed** to see how current your view is. #### It says "No Valid License." The app is installed but the site has no active licence. Your Jira administrator can resolve it from the Marketplace apps screen. #### My workspace looks different from a colleague's Administrators can detach an individual workspace from the site-wide configuration, giving it its own hierarchy, card layouts, and timeline defaults. Two workspaces on the same site can therefore be shaped differently on purpose. *** ### For administrators Configuration lives in Jira administration, under **Workspace settings**. It has five sections. #### Display policy The site-wide definition of finished work — a JQL clause, `statusCategory = Done` unless you change it — used by every view that hides completed work. This is also where **Ambient Insight** is switched on or off for the site, where its insight definitions are written, and where you opt in to **collecting missing feature requests** from Rovo. Request collection is **off** by default. #### Timeline The defaults every workspace inherits: which hierarchy level becomes timeline bars, which fields supply start and due dates, the starting scale, the assumed duration when a date is missing, and the minimum bar width. #### Hierarchy & card layouts The shape of the tree: how many levels (between two and six, always starting with Project), what each level is called, which Jira issue types belong to it, whether it starts expanded, how it sorts, whether dragging can reorder or reparent, whether out-of-order children appear under higher parents, whether creating children is allowed, and what the trail count counts. Each level also has a **Card Designer** for what its cards show — fields, rollups such as child count and earliest or latest child due date, conditional formatting, quick action buttons, the edit action, and time roll-up metrics. Conditional formatting can tint a whole card or a single field based on rules like overdue, due this week, a field's value, or status category. New installations already flag overdue work. #### Workspaces Rename and delete workspaces here — deletion asks twice and never touches the underlying Jira projects. Creating a workspace happens on the Work Map, not in admin. This is also where a workspace's **configuration source** is set. Every workspace shows **Following global** to begin with. **Detach** takes a snapshot of the current global hierarchy, cards, and timeline that you can then edit for that workspace alone; detaching changes nothing on its own. **Reattach to global** puts it back, keeping the custom snapshot in case you want it again. It is deliberately all-or-nothing: a workspace follows the global configuration completely or uses its own completely. There is no partial inheritance. Project membership, views, the completed-work rule, and Ambient Insight stay global regardless. #### Feature requests When request collection is enabled, this lists what users asked Rovo for that the product cannot do, with who asked and when. It does not load anything until you click **Load requests**. #### Quick actions Configured per level in the Card Designer, quick action buttons call **Jira Automation incoming webhooks**, optionally with a small form the user fills in first. This is the only mechanism Forge exposes for triggering automation, so a quick action always runs through a webhook rather than calling a rule directly. *** ### Permissions and data Workspace uses your existing Jira permissions. People see the projects and issues Jira already lets them see, and edits are made as the person making them, subject to the same rules as editing in Jira directly. The app runs on **Atlassian Forge**, so it is hosted on Atlassian infrastructure. Workspace sends **product usage telemetry** to PostHog to help us improve it. That means your Atlassian account ID, your site URL, and coarse interaction data such as which view was switched to and how many results a search returned. It does **not** include issue summaries, field values, search text, or JQL. Session replay is off. A site administrator can disable analytics egress for the app in its Forge permissions, and the product works normally without it. *** ### The project page (Epics Summary) Workspace also appears in each Jira project's sidebar, where it opens an older single-project screen headed **Epics Summary**. It shows that project's epics as a card list with its own configuration and paging, and its **Share** button is not yet active. It is a separate, earlier surface. The multi-project Work Map under **Apps → Workspace** is the product this documentation describes. *** ### Finding your version The **Help** menu on the Work Map shows the version you are running, including the build number — for example `v1.0.30 · build 142`. Include it in any support request. *** ### Support For questions, feature requests, or bug reports, contact us through the support portal. You can also raise a feature request through the Workspace Assistant — just ask it for what you need. If your administrator has enabled request collection, it records the request for us to review. *** *Last updated: 11 August 2026. Applies to Workspace for Jira v1.0.30.*