Working with issues#

Almost everything in Hinata happens on an issue: a bug, a feature, an epic, a small chore. The board, the timeline and the reports show the same issues in different ways.

What an issue is#

An issue is one piece of work with a title, a status and comments. It belongs to exactly one project and carries that project's key plus a number, such as HIN-42 or WEB-7.

Create an issue#

Every way in opens the same form:

• The amber New issue button at the top of the navy sidebar (on every page)
• The New issue button in the top right of the Issues page
• ⌘K (Ctrl+K on Windows and Linux), type "new", pick Create new issue
• Add sub-task or Add child issue on an open issue. The new one is attached right away.
• On the board: the input at the bottom of a column. The issue gets that column's status.

What the fields mean#

Only project and title are required.

Project, Status, Priority and Type are preset, the rest starts empty.

Field	What it does
Project	Decides the key, statuses and labels. You only see projects you are a member of.
Title	One clear line for lists, cards and search.
Description	What, why, when it is done. See Writing with the editor.
Status	The board column, from the project's workflow.
Assignee	Who does the work. Empty: Unassigned. The detail view has Assign to me.
Priority	Showstopper, Critical, High Priority, Normal, Minor or Very Low. Default: Normal.
Type	Epic, Story, Task, Bug, Feature or Sub-task, see Choosing a type.
Story points	Size, not hours. Feeds sprint capacity and velocity.
Label	Coloured tags such as frontend, needs-design, regression. Create new ones in the picker.
Sprint	Empty means backlog.
Epic / Parent	The issue one level up ("Parent" on sub-tasks).
Start date / Due date	The bar on the timeline. A past due date shows red in lists.

A deadline that follows the project's date#

Where the instance runs project templates, both date fields have a second mode: instead of a fixed day, an offset from the project's date — "4 weeks before", say. The date it works out to stands right beside it.

Calendar days are preselected. Working days skip weekends and, where the project has a holiday calendar selected, its public holidays; without such a calendar a holiday counts as a working day.

In lists and on board cards the deadline stays a date, with a small clock glyph saying that it hangs off the project's date. Pick a day by hand and the offset is dropped, so the next change to the project date leaves it alone.

Choosing a type#

The type decides icon, colour and level:

Epic
└─ Story · Task · Bug · Feature
   └─ Sub-task

Type	Use it for	Sits
Epic	A theme across many sprints	Top
Story	Value from the user's side	Middle, can hold sub-tasks
Task	Work that is not user facing, such as a migration	Middle
Bug	Something is broken	Middle
Feature	A new capability	Middle
Sub-task	One step inside a middle issue	Bottom, always has a parent

Rule of thumb: if it moves through the workflow on its own, it is middle level. If it only makes sense as part of something, it is a sub-task. If it is too big to finish, it is an epic.

Building the hierarchy#

• From below: set Epic in the details column (Parent on sub-tasks). The picker shows recent epics first.
• From above: Add child issue on an epic or Add sub-task on a story.
• Detaching: pick No epic. The child stays as its own issue.

The Sub-tasks card and a badge in lists show progress, such as "3 of 7 done". The board can group swimlanes by epic or filter to one epic.

Finding the issue you want#

The Issues page lists every issue you can see. The count under the heading shows how many are in view.

The 0/1 badge counts finished sub-tasks, red dates are overdue.

• Group by: None, Status, Priority, Assignee, Project or Type
• Sort: newest, oldest or last modified
• Filter: five multi-select facets, plus the Archived switch
• Time range: Overdue, Due by today, This week, Next 7 days, a custom range and more
• Export: the whole filtered result set as PDF, CSV or JSON

One tab per facet, and the button counts active filters.

For a specific issue, the command palette is faster.

Selecting several issues and setting one deadline#

In the list you can select several issues and give them all the same deadline in one step.

• On a phone, press and hold an issue. The first time, a short tip above the list explains this.
• On wider windows, tap the round select button next to New issue. The same button ends the selection.
• Select all selects the rows that are loaded right now, not every match of the filter.

Then Set deadline lets you pick a date or remove the deadline from all of them. This works for up to 100 issues at a time. With project templates on and all selected issues in one project, you can also set the deadline as an offset from that project's event date. Issues from several projects only take a fixed date, because each project has its own event date.

The change applies to all of them or to none: if you may not edit one of the issues, none of them changes.

The issue in detail#

Content on the left, facts on the right.

Title, description and sub-tasks on the left, Details, Deployment and Timeline on the right.

The top bar#

Back arrow, key and status.

The … menu: Watch, Export…, Clone…, Move to project… and Delete.

The main column#

• Title and Description: double-tap (double-click) to edit
• Sub-tasks (Child issues on epics): with progress and a field to add more
• Linked issues: see Linking issues
• Attachments: see Comments & attachments
• Activity: the tabs All, Comments and History

The details column#

Click a value to open a picker for Status, Assignee (with Assign to me), Priority, Type, Epic or Parent, Story points, Label and Sprint. Only Author is fixed.

The Timeline card holds Start date, Due date, Log time and, once work is logged, a line such as "Spent 1h 30m of 4h" (see Tracking your time). At the bottom it says "Created 3 days ago" or "Updated …".

Editing an issue#

• Fields on the right save immediately. Dragging a card into another board column changes the status.
• Title and description: double-tap, edit, Save or Cancel.

Other people's changes appear live, without a refresh and without overwriting anything.

Reading the activity trail#

• All: comments and changes together, good for catching up
• Comments: only what people wrote, the default tab
• History: only changes such as "changed the status", with who and when

Hinata writes the history automatically and nobody can edit it.

A comment can be deleted by its author, by the project's leads and by the Team-Admins of a team that owns the project. Platform admins can only do it if they hold one of those roles. See Comments & attachments.

Share a link to an issue#

Click the key in the top bar (HIN-42) to copy a link. A green tick confirms it. The link opens the app if installed, otherwise the browser. Recipients need an account on your server and access to the project.

Writing with the editor#

The description and comments share one editor. The toolbar has Text style (Body text, Heading 1 to 3), Bold, Italic, Underline, Strikethrough, Inline code, Bullet list, Numbered list, Task list, Quote, Link, Code block (with a language picker), Table, Divider, Insert image, Info panel, Warning, Note, Tip and undo/redo.

• @ searches issues, knowledge base articles and people. An issue becomes a chip that follows renames and status live. A person gets notified.
• Images can be pasted or inserted and upload to your server. On mobile, + offers camera and photo library.

Linking issues to each other#

In the Linked issues card: Add issue, pick one of thirteen relationships on the left, type a title, key or URL on the right (several allowed), then Link.

Relationship on the left, search on the right, existing links above.

Relationship	Reads as	Use it when
is blocked by / blocks	"HIN-42 is blocked by HIN-40"	Work cannot start until the other is done
duplicates / is duplicated by	"HIN-42 duplicates HIN-11"	Reported twice
relates to	Same from both ends	Loosely connected, no dependency
clones / is cloned by	Set automatically by cloning	Copy and original
tests / is tested by	"HIN-90 tests HIN-42"	Test or QA for a piece of work
split to / split from	"HIN-42 split to HIN-55"	Too big, split into several
created / created by	Provenance	One piece of work produced another

The other issue shows the opposite direction immediately, live.

!!! info "Only blocks affects scheduling" Only blocks is drawn on the timeline as an arrow and counts for the critical path. The others never move a date.

Watching an issue#

… → Watch. You get comments and changes until you turn it off. The popover lists all watchers. Assignee and reporter are notified anyway, and the popover tells them so. Everything you watch is on the Watched page.

Cloning an issue#

… → Clone copies the issue into the same project, for example as a template.

Summary prefixed "CLONE -", with the Attachments, Links and Sprint values switches off.

• Attachments are copied as separate files.
• A clones link to the original is always created, and you are the author.
• Comments, work logs and history stay with the original.

Moving an issue to another project#

… → Move to project…: pick the target project, then map the statuses. Hinata pre-matches what it can and shows consequences and new keys.

HIN-4 becomes MOB-9, and its three sub-tasks move along.

The old key stops resolving.

Archiving and deleting#

Archiving is open to every project member. The issue leaves lists, boards, sprints and search but stays intact. The Archived filter finds it, Restore brings it back. Sub-tasks of a story, task, bug or feature go along.

Deleting is only for project leads and admins of a team that owns the project. Platform admins may only do it when they hold one of those roles. Everyone else only sees Archive. If you can delete, the dialog offers both, with Delete in red.

Exporting or printing one issue#

… → Export… offers Print, Export as PDF, Export as Excel, Export as Word and Export as XML.

• The server renders everything, so the layout is the same on every device. Print uses the same PDF.
• Included: fields, description, comments, linked issues, list of attachments, change history.
• Excel has two sheets (fields and comments), XML is machine readable.
• iOS, Android, macOS and Windows open the share sheet. Linux saves to your Downloads folder and shows the file name. On the web, the browser takes it.

Related pages#

• Boards & sprints: workflow, sprints, backlog
• Comments & attachments: conversation, files, voice notes
• Timeline & dependencies: dates and blocks on the chart
• Tracking your time: logging work, timesheets
• Staying informed: who gets told what
• Finding things: ⌘K palette, saved filters and search syntax