Issue Workflows
Configure Team Issue statuses, workflow inheritance, duplicate marking, parent auto-close, and Team auto-archive behavior.
Issue workflows let each Team define the status vocabulary and narrow automations used by its Issues.
Workflow ownership
Every Team has one effective Issue workflow. Root Teams own a custom workflow by default. Child Teams inherit their parent workflow until a Team manager overrides the full workflow for that child Team.
Inherited workflows are read-only. Override the workflow before editing statuses or automation settings for a child Team.
Status categories
Statuses are configurable inside fixed categories:
| Category | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Backlog | Work captured but not ready to start. |
| Unstarted | Ready work that has not begun. |
| Started | Work in progress or review. |
| Completed | Finished work. |
| Canceled | Work intentionally stopped. |
| Duplicate | Reserved workflow outcome for duplicate Issues. |
Teams can create, rename, recolor, describe, reorder, and delete eligible statuses. One active status is the default for new Issues. Completed, canceled, Duplicate, inherited, current-default, last-in-category, and actively used statuses can block some actions.
Duplicate marking
Mark as duplicate of is a same-Team workflow action. It links the source Issue to one visible canonical Issue in the same Team and moves the source to the reserved Duplicate status.
Duplicate marking does not merge labels, assignees, Features, comments, or child Issues. The canonical target remains unchanged.
Parent auto-close
Parent auto-close is off by default. When enabled, choose an active completed-category status as the target.
With cascade off, Integrity only evaluates the direct parent. A parent auto-closes when all active same-Team direct children are completed or canceled.
With Cascade parent auto-close on, an auto-closed parent can continue the same check up eligible same-Team ancestors. The chain stops at the first ineligible ancestor, including an open sibling, duplicate parent, already completed or canceled parent, archived or deleted parent, cross-Team link, repeated ancestor, or hierarchy depth limit.
Parent auto-close never reopens ancestors. If a parent is already completed or canceled, cascade stops there.
Parent auto-close can run after:
- a child status changes to completed or canceled;
- a completed or canceled Issue is moved into or out of a parent;
- an Issue moves Teams and leaves a source parent newly eligible;
- parent auto-close settings are enabled or retargeted after children are already terminal.
Each auto-closed parent or ancestor writes its own workflow automation status-change activity.
Team auto-archive
Team auto-archive is off by default. When enabled, a Team manager chooses whether completed Issues, canceled Issues, or both are eligible and selects an allowed archive window: 1, 3, 7, 14, 30, 60, or 90 days.
The daily worker archives only active completed or canceled Issues that are older than the configured window. It skips already archived, deleted, and permanently deleted Issues, and it skips parent Issues that still have active descendants.
Auto-archived Issues use the same lifecycle path as manual archive. They leave active Issue lists, appear in Team archive views, write workflow automation activity, and suspend direct-share-only access while preserving the share record for future restore/unarchive behavior.
Access and privacy
Workflow settings are managed by people with Team Settings Management access. Direct-share-only users can see display-safe current status on a shared active Issue, but they cannot enumerate the owning Team workflow, status list, duplicate targets, automation settings, archive summaries, inherited parent workflow context, or private Team labels.