YouTrack 2017.3 introduced seemingly minor updates that have a huge impact on how you can configure an agile board. Follow the instructions on this page to enable these updates an existing agile board.
No Sprints
First, we added the option to disable sprints. This is big news for that teams who follow a Kanban methodology. It's also a useful update for individuals and teams who monitor activity on an agile board, but don't use sprints.
New boards with sprints disabled eliminate visual clutter and remove meaningless controls.
Users no longer have to hack the settings of a sprint-based board to filter cards with a search query.
If you were using a single, unscheduled sprint to mimic a Kanban-style board, you can easily change the configuration of your existing board. If you linked your sprints with a dedicated custom field just so you could use a search query to filter the cards on the board, you can disable the sprints on your board, remove the custom field from your project, and continue to use the filter.
To disable swimlanes on an existing board:
Open your agile board in YouTrack.
Click the Board settings button in the toolbar and select the General tab.
Check your current Board behavior options.
If your current option is set to Manually assign issues or Automatically add new issues to <sprint name>, continue with step 4.
If your current option is set to Link sprints to values for <custom field>, check the query field. When you disable sprints, all issues that match the query are added to your board. If this field is empty, all of the issues in each project that is managed on the board are added.
Take a minute to verify that your query returns the issues that should be shown on the board, then continue from step 5.
Open the Sprints drop-down list and verify that the sprint that contains the issues that you want to manage on the board is identified as the current sprint. The name of the current sprint is displayed in bold text. If the sprint that contains your issues is not marked as the current sprint, archive all of the sprints that you want to exclude from the selection.
Set the Sprints option to Disabled.
Confirm the action in the Disable sprints dialog.
All sprints, including archived sprints are removed from the board.
All of the sprint-related interface elements are no longer visible on your board.
If your board behavior was set to Manually assign issues or Automatically add new issues to <sprint name>, all of the issues that were assigned to the current sprint are added to the board.
If your board behavior was set to Link sprints to values for <custom field>, the following changes are applied:
All issues that match the query are added to the board.
If the search query was not empty, the board behavior option is set to Filter cards to match a query. The old query is migrated to the new configuration.
Alternatively, you can create a new board using the updated Kanban board template and delete your old board. However, you will need to update your bookmarks and reassign issues to your new board.
Project-based Swimlanes
Second, we added the option to identify swimlanes by projects. This means that users who want projects as swimlanes no longer have to create dummy parent issues as swimlanes that have no other purpose other than to represent a project.
To identify swimlanes by project:
Open your agile board in YouTrack.
Click the Board settings button in the toolbar.
Select the Columns and Rows tab in the Board Settings panel.
Set the option to identify swimlanes by Values from field Project.
All of the projects that are managed on the board are added as swimlanes.
Any issues that are already assigned to the board are placed in the swimlane that corresponds with the project they belong to.
Personal Board Template
We have added a template for an agile board that is preconfigured to be used as a personal board.
The template recognizes all of the projects where you are a team member for quick and easy configuration. The template also uses a query to filter cards on the board and show only issues that are assigned to you.
