Issues
What are Issues?
Issues represent specific tasks that need to be completed. Issues can be broken down into sub-issues, representing smaller tasks that need to be done to accomplish the parent Issue. Issues are organized into Projects, which define larger portions of work that a team needs to complete.
Whenever an issue is created with a status of “Todo” and is assigned to a team member, the system automatically generates a Todo in that member’s Planner, allowing them to add it to their own schedule.
Creating Issues
Select the Tracker view by clicking the checkbox icon on the left sidebar, and ensure the side panel is open by clicking the horizontal lines at the top left.
Click the blue + New Issue button at the stop of the side panel. This will open a dialog where you can enter some initial settings for your Issue. After entering your desired settings, click Create issue.
Issue settings
Project: In the top left corner of the dialog, you will see the Project that this Issue is associated with. Click on the name of the Project to see a dropdown where you can choose to select a different Project to associate with this Issue.
Issue title: A title for your Issue.
Description: A description of your Issue. Descriptions may be formatted with markdown formatting, including headers, codeblocks, links and more.
Issue status: It is recommended to set your Issue status to “Todo” when it’s first created.
Priority: Choose from No priority, Low, Medium, High or Urgent.
Assignee: Select a member to assign this Issue to. When you create an Issue assigned to a member, that member will recieve a Todo in their Planner that will allow them to add it to their own schedule.
Default Issue status: Select the status all new Issues should default to when they are created.
Labels: Add labels for this Issue or add new ones. This is optional, but can be helpful for sorting Issues later.
Estimation: Add an estimation for how long this Issue will take to complete. This is optional, but is a helpful tool for workflow tracking and scheduling.
Due date: Select a due date for this Issue. This is also optional, and its usefulness will depend on your team’s specific use case.
Set parent Issue: Make this Issue the sub-issue of an existing Issue.
Attach: Attach a file, image or other media to this Issue.
Viewing Issues
List and Kanban Views
The default view for Issues is the List view, where Issues are listed in order of their status. Huly also offers the option for a Kanban view, which displays Issues in a column format. To toggle between the two views, click either the List or Kanban icon in the top right corner of the window.
Issue peek & shortcuts
Press the space bar while hovering over any Issue to “peek” at that Issue’s details. From this view, you can use the up and down arrows on your keyboard to scroll through your Issues.
Press C on your keyboard to create a new Issue from any view.
Sorting, filtering and searching
Options for sorting and filtering issues can also be found in the top right corner. The View button allows for configuration of some viewing settings as well as options for sorting how issues are grouped and ordered on the page. The Show button displays toggles for showing and hiding Issue details.
The Filter button, next to the search bar, offers options for filtering Issues. The search bar can be used to search for a specific Issue by keyword.
For quick sorting, select Active, Backlog or All from the menu above the search bar.
Editing Issue details
Click on any Issue to view and edit its details. There are several options for editing an Issue:
Add a sub-issue: Add a sub-issue directly to the Issue you are viewing.
Activity: View the history of any activity, comments or changes related to this Issue, including the member’s name, the action, timestamp and any relevant links. Use the toggle icon button the filter and sort activities.
Comment: Use the text box to leave a comment on the Issue. Just like Issue descriptions, comments can include file attachments, @mentions, emojis and text templates. Comments will be added to the Activity section of the Issue.
Settings icon: Opens a dialog with several options to edit Issue details such as status, priority, assignee and due date, among others; there are also handy shortcuts for copying the Issue ID, title or URL, and duplicating the Issue, among others.
Link icon: Copies a link to the Issue to the clipboard.
Side panel icon: Opens the right side panel, which contains information about the Issue.
Tips for creating effective Issues
There are so many ways to customize Issues to suit the needs of your specific projects and workflows! However, there are a few tips to keep in mind as you create Issues for your team.
- Issues should be small in scope, representing a task assigned to just one person. For larger tasks, use sub-issues to break them down further.
- All new Issues should have a status of “Todo” to trigger the system to create a Todo for the assigned team member.
- In keeping with best practices, an Issue status should never need to be manually changed from “Todo” to “In Progress” or “Done”. Rather, the status of an Issue should automatically be determined by the assigned team member’s Todo status. For more on how this process is automated, read more about Todos here.