Planyway for Jira helps you visually plan multiple projects on a timeline, track time, build product roadmaps, manage team workload, and meet deadlines efficiently. This guide will help you get started quickly.
Step 1. Sync Planyway with Jira, Connect Projects and JQL filters
Sync Planyway and Jira Dates
By default, Planyway dates sync with the custom start and due date fields in Jira.
Note: You can also sync any Jira custom date fields with Planyway to match your workflow.
For more details, read: Sync Jira and Planyway Dates.
Connect Multiple Projects
Manage work items from multiple projects in one place:
Click + Add projects in the sidebar to connect more projects.
Switch between them using the dropdown in the task panel.
Work with JQL Filters
In addition to projects, Planyway now supports loading data from JQL filters saved in Jira. This way, you can focus only on the work items that matter to you, without waiting for heavy project loads or filtering manually.
How it works:
Add JQL filters in the sidebar, just like projects. You can enable, disable, or remove them at any time.
Work items from JQL filters are available in Calendar, Timeline, Time Tracking, and Workload tabs. Task panel shows only work items that match the filter.
Subtasks appear only if they meet the filter conditions. Work logs are available only for the work items loaded through filters.
If you create a new work item that doesn’t match the filter, it will disappear after reload, and you’ll see a message with details.
If you don’t have access to a shared filter, you won’t see its work items in Planyway.
Note: JQL filters don’t affect Reports, only selected projects are included there.
Step 2. Organize Work Items and Manage Workload
Get the General Overview
1. Views – Switch between different views depending on your project stage.
Timeline – group work items by user, epic, project, team, or component for better planning.
Workload – plan and distribute your team’s capacity efficiently.
Calendar – get a clear view of your monthly agenda.
Time Tracking – log time on tasks effortlessly.
Reports – analyze total time spent on work items.
2. Connected projects – Link multiple Jira projects to manage all work items in one place.
3. JQL filters – Apply filters to focus on what matters most in your workflow.
4. Task Panel – Switch between projects, use search and filters, manage epics and releases, drag work items onto the timeline or calendar.
5. Filter menu – Narrow down work items by assignees, epics, releases, issue types, labels, statuses, teams, and sprints.
6. Complete Status Filter – Switch between completed and incomplete work items.
7. Settings – Set working days, manage workload schemes, enable custom issue type for milestones.
8. Fields – Customize cards by adding key details like dates, project names, statuses, planned and tracked time.
9. View Settings – Adjust your workspace by highlighting today, hiding weekends, enabling holidays and vacations, and displaying dependencies, subtasks, work logs, milestones, releases, and sprints.
10. Share – Generate and share a link to your configured view, including selected projects and active filters, to collaborate with your team effortlessly.
Organize Work Items on Timeline
The Timeline view in Planyway helps you organize and track work items efficiently. Depending on your needs, you can choose from several grouping options that allow you to see the big picture or focus on specific details.
Plan tasks for multiple users
Use the Users dropdown on the left to show or hide specific team members. This way, you can plan tasks across the whole team at once, or narrow down the view to just a few people. It’s especially useful for coordinating workloads and ensuring that everyone is aligned.
Group by projects
Switch to Projects grouping to get a portfolio-level perspective. This helps you see how work is distributed across projects, compare timelines, and spot dependencies or overlaps.
Group work items by epics
Use Epics grouping to build a high-level roadmap with collapsible lanes and progress bars.
The progress bar reflects either dates set directly in the Jira date fields for each epic, or rolled-up dates automatically calculated from their child work items.
The Remove dates option lets you delete manually set dates and show only rolled-up child issue dates.
In View settings, you’ll also find the Show epics based on rolled-up dates toggle to disable automatic dates if needed.
Group work items by components
Organize complex projects with multiple workstreams using Components grouping. Work items without a component will appear in a dedicated lane, so nothing gets lost.
Group work items by team
Visualize workloads across multiple teams with the Team grouping option. To make this work, ensure that Jira teams are assigned to work items in your connected projects — this way, all related lanes will appear on the Timeline.
Disable grouping
Select By None for a flat overview of all work items, regardless of their hierarchy or attributes.
Enable Fields on Cards
For extra clarity, you can enable additional fields on work item cards in the timeline. This makes it easy to spot key details at a glance, such as start and due dates, status, project, planned time, or time remaining.
Manage Team Workload
Planyway helps you visualize and balance your team’s workload effortlessly. You can plan capacity not only by estimating tasks, but also by adjusting for each person’s individual working hours, vacations, and holidays.
Workload can be calculated on any timeline scale, from daily to yearly, so you always have the right level of detail to manage your team’s availability.
Tip: For a step-by-step setup, check out our detailed help article.
View Work Items on Calendar
Use Calendar view to plan your schedule:
Select months via the dropdown.
Use the arrow buttons («, ‹, ›, ») to move between days, weeks, and months.
Click Today to instantly jump back to the current date.
Step 3. Schedule Work Items and Apply Filters
Schedule Work Items
There are several ways to add a new issue to Planyway:
Click on date and time on the timeline or calendar to create a new issue.
Drag and drop work items from the task panel to schedule them.
Add Planyway dates to a work item in your project.
To reschedule multiple work items at the same time, hold down Ctrl, select work items and move them to a new date.
Apply Filters
Planyway provides multiple ways to filter work items so you can focus on exactly what you need. Filters can be applied both on the timeline and in task panels, depending on your workflow.
Filter menu
Use the filter menu to refine work items by members, labels, status, issue types, epics, releases, sprints, teams, and custom fields.
Filters affect not only the visible work items but also the lanes in the Timeline. For example, applying an epic filter will display only the selected epic and its work items while hiding lanes of other epics.
The task panel has its own set of filters that apply only to items listed there, without changing the timeline view.
Supported custom fields for filtering: user and text.
Show completed
Choose how far back completed issues should be displayed in Planyway (1, 3, 6, 9, or 12 months). Completed issues and their time logs outside the selected range won’t be loaded into Planyway.
This filter is especially useful when you have many completed tasks, as it helps improve performance and keep your view focused. You can find it in View settings.
Status filter
Track work by filtering completed or incomplete work items (issues). This filter doesn’t apply to work items in the task panel, which has its own filters for Unscheduled and All cards.
Step 4. Track Time and Generate Reports
Log Time
Add work logs manually or use the timer.
Export work logs to Excel or CSV for further analysis.
Tip: Learn more about Time Tracking in Planyway here.
Build Reports
Planyway lets you turn tracked time into actionable insights. With the Tracked Time Report, you can analyze how much time was spent on issues by project, work item, epic, user, and date.
Apply filters for full coverage.
Set a custom date range to analyze a specific period.
Group results by project, user, epic, or date.
Visualize work in charts and export results to Excel or CSV.
Tip: Learn more about building time tracking reports in Planyway here.
Step 5. Monitor Sprints and Releases
Sprints
Keep track of your sprints and related work items in Timeline and Workload views:
Add a Sprint lane and enable Show issues based on their Sprint.
Review workload within a sprint.
Visualize upcoming sprints and move task between users or sprints as needed.
How work items are displayed with Sprint view enabled:
With dates → shown by start/due.
Without dates → shown by sprint dates.
Manual changes → break sprint sync.
Remove from Calendar resets to sprint dates.
Releases (Versions)
Track and monitor the progress of your Releases directly on the timeline. Releases help you stay on top of upcoming deliveries and their progress.
To add Releases to the timeline, click the drop-down menu in the resource panel located on the left side of the timeline.
The progress of each release will be visually displayed on the timeline, giving you a clear overview of how close the release is to completion.
Step 6. Create and Manage Milestones
Milestones are an excellent way to highlight key dates and help your team stay aligned with important goals and deadlines.
Enable milestones
Click View at the top right of the navigation bar.
Choose Milestones from the dropdown to add a milestone lane above your team members or boards.
Create a milestone
Click any date in the milestone lane to add it.
You can name the milestone, set a specific date, and mark it as completed once the goal is achieved.
Use Jira work items as milestones
In addition to native Planyway milestones, you can display Jira work item types in the milestone lane.
Open General settings and choose the work item type (for example, Epics or any custom Jira type with a due date).
Work items of the selected type will appear in the milestone lane according to their due date.
The selected work item type displays its key and behaves like a regular milestone: you can duplicate, complete, or delete it.
Step 7. Manage Dependencies
See dependencies between tasks to plan work in the right order, avoid bottlenecks, and react quickly if deadlines are at risk.
Tip: Learn more in the Dependencies guide.
You’re now ready to manage your projects efficiently with Planyway for Jira! If you have any questions, check out our Help Center or contact support. Happy planning! 🙂