Workflows
Workflows in YouTrack let you customize and automate the lifecycle of issues in your project. With workflows, you can easily notify teams about events, enforce policies, execute periodic tasks, and support existing business processes.
Workflows in JavaScript
Starting from YouTrack 2017.2, you can write workflows in JavaScript instead of the domain-specific language that is used in previous versions. You can write a workflow in any IDE that supports JavaScript, pack it into a ZIP file and upload it to YouTrack.
In addition, we built a web-based workflow editor inside YouTrack. Here, you can write a workflow from scratch without leaving YouTrack.
From YouTrack 2017.3, this feature has been upgraded from experimental to public. This means that the feature is available for general use and does not need to be enabled separately.
We still support workflows that were written in the external workflow editor. However, the documentation for the current version of YouTrack only describes how to work with the web-based editor and write workflows in JavaScript. If you want to update older workflows, please refer to the documentation for YouTrack 2017.2.
What's a Workflow?
In YouTrack, a workflow is a set of rules that can be attached to a project. These rules define a lifecycle for issues in a project and automate changes that can be applied to issues.
When you create a workflow, you can attach it to a project and activate specific rules. A workflow can contain several rules, but you can choose which combination of rules you want to activate in different projects. YouTrack lets you attach a workflow to several projects and enable or disable rules for each project individually. For detailed instructions, see Manage Workflows for Multiple Projects.
Default Workflows
YouTrack provides several default workflows that cover the most general use cases. For example, workflows that automatically assign an issue to a subsystem owner or process duplicate issue.
Many default workflows are auto-attached. These workflows are attached automatically to all new projects.
For a complete list of the workflows that are bundled with YouTrack, see Default Workflows.
Custom Workflows
If you need a workflow that supports a specific use case, you can write your own. You can either customize a default workflow to support your use case or create a new workflow. For more information, see Edit a Workflow and Create a Workflow.
You can also use custom workflows that have been uploaded to the Custom Workflow Repository in GitHub.