How to use Deadline Tracker for Jira: the due date board, drag-and-drop rescheduling with undo, filters, profiles, view tabs, workload, CSV export and gadget.

Overview

Deadline Tracker shows the Jira issues that are due soon — across all your projects or the ones you choose — on one board with five columns: Overdue, Today, 1-3 Days, 4-7 Days and 1-2 Weeks. Dragging a card to another column sets the issue’s due date in Jira.

Every change is made as you, with your own Jira permissions: if you cannot edit an issue in Jira, the app cannot either — the card goes back and a message gives Jira’s reason. The app runs on Atlassian Forge and stores only your saved filters and views, in your Atlassian site.

The board is visual: it does not send reminders or e-mails. For the digest Jira sends on its own, a reminder rule for the days before a due date and the JQL behind each column, see Jira deadlines: due date JQL, reminders, the day rule.

Install and open the board

Install Deadline Tracker from the Atlassian Marketplace (a Jira admin approves the permissions).
In Jira’s sidebar, open Apps and choose Deadline Tracker.

The page covers every project you can see. Narrow it with the Projects filter — the board below shows two projects, Payments Platform and Web App.

The due date board

Column	Shows issues due…	A drop sets the due date to
Overdue	before today	yesterday
Today	today	today
1-3 Days	in the next 1 to 3 days	today + 3 days
4-7 Days	in 4 to 7 days	today + 7 days
1-2 Weeks	in 8 to 14 days	today + 14 days

“Today” is your own calendar day, in your time zone. Cards are sorted by due date. Issues without a due date, or due more than 14 days from now, are not on this board. Done issues are left out too, unless you tick Show done issues in the filters.

Reschedule issues

Drag a card to another column. The card moves at once and the due date is written to Jira.
Without a mouse: open the card’s ⋯ menu and choose a column under Move to.

Undo: the message “PAY-8 moved to 1-3 Days.” has Undo, and Ctrl+Z (⌘Z on a Mac) does the same. Undo writes back the exact previous date, not the date of the column it came from. Only the last move can be undone.
Several at once: Ctrl+click (⌘+click or Shift+click) cards, or choose Select in a card’s menu. A bar “N selected” offers Move to… and Clear selection. One Undo brings all of them back.
If Jira refuses a change (no permission, the Due date field is not on the edit screen), only that card goes back and the message says why.

Change the assignee or the summary from the card

Click the assignee avatar on a card to choose another person who can be assigned in the project, or Unassigned. Edit summary in the card’s menu renames the issue (Enter saves, Escape cancels).

View the issue in the card’s menu opens Jira’s own issue dialog.

Filters

The two filters used most on this board — Assignees and Projects — are always visible. More filters opens the rest; the button counts the filters that are set, and Clear filters empties them all.

Filter	What it does
Assignees	issues of the chosen people; “Unassigned” = issues without an assignee
Groups	issues of every active member of the chosen groups — also in large groups
Projects	issues of the chosen projects (empty = all projects you can see)
Exclude people	hides the chosen people’s issues
Include / Exclude statuses	only issues in these statuses / hides issues in these statuses
Issue types, Priorities	only these issue types or priorities
Created after / Created before	issues created in this period
Show done issues	also shows issues whose status is in the Done category

Quick filters next to them narrow the cards already on screen at once and are not saved: Find by key or summary (every word must match; Escape empties it), Mine and Unassigned.

A board loads up to 1,000 issues. If more match, “Not every issue is shown” asks you to narrow the filters.

Save your filters as profiles

The Profile select at the top keeps named sets of filters. The board opens with default.

Save stores every filter, the column order and WIP limits in the selected profile. Until then “Unsaved changes” is shown next to it.
New profile: type a name into the Profile select and choose Create profile ”…”.

Delete: the ⋯ menu next to Save → Delete profile…, then confirm.

Profiles are yours: nobody else sees them.

Board settings, column order and WIP limits

Board settings (the gear next to Refresh) changes how the board looks; the choice is saved with Save:

Swimlanes — None, Assignee, Parent (epic), Priority or Project. Each lane has its own title and count and can be folded.
Column sums — issue count only, original or remaining estimate, Story Points or another number field. Each column header then shows Σ next to its count.
Card fields — show Parent, Status, Due date, Labels, Components, Fix versions or Remaining estimate on every card.
Auto-refresh — off, or every 1, 5, 15 or 30 minutes while the page is open and nothing is being dragged.

A column’s ⋯ menu moves the column left or right (you can also drag it by its header) and sets a WIP limit:

Type a whole number (1–999) and press Enter; empty or 0 removes the limit. The header then shows “cards / limit” and turns red over the limit. Limits warn; they do not stop a move.

More boards as view tabs

Under the title, a row of tabs holds your boards. The first tab, By due date, is the board described above. + (Add a view) adds another board to this page:

By priority, By status, By assignee — the boards of the other Simplify board apps; a drop changes the priority, runs the status transition, or reassigns the issue. On this page the priority and status boards first ask you to choose a project.
Workload — a heatmap of each person’s hours by week (see below).
Sprints (Jira Software) — Backlog, the active sprint and future sprints of a Scrum board; a drop moves the issue into a sprint or back to the backlog.
By field… — columns by Labels, Components, Fix versions or a single-select field.

Due-date marks follow your cards to every other board: Overdue (red), Due today, Due tomorrow and Due in N days (up to 3, amber). Here is the By assignee board for four people:

Workload by week

The Workload view puts the chosen people in rows and the weeks in columns — Overdue, this week, the five weeks after it, and No due date. Each cell shows the remaining estimate (or the original estimate, when nothing remains recorded) of the person’s open issues due that week, and how many issues. A week is green up to 80 % of the person’s capacity, amber up to 100 % and red above it. Click “40h a week” under a name to set that person’s hours; click a cell to list its issues.

For capacity planning across a team, Workload & Capacity Planner is built around this view.

With an added tab selected, the ⋯ menu next to Save holds the view’s actions:

An added tab has its own filters; Save stores them in the view, not in a profile.
Share with everyone shares the view as it is now. Others find it under + → Shared views and add it as a tab. The person who shared it, and Jira admins, can change it for everyone; anyone else can Save as my view.
The page address follows the selected tab, so you can send a link to a view.
Removing a view never changes issues in Jira.

Export to CSV

⋯ → Export to CSV saves the cards on screen (quick filters apply) as a spreadsheet: key, summary, column, status, priority, assignee and due date. The file is made in your browser; nothing is sent anywhere.

Dashboard gadget

Add Deadline Tracker to a Jira dashboard (Dashboards → your dashboard → Edit → Add gadget). In the gadget’s Configure, choose the Board (by due date, priority, status or assignee), the Project (needed for the priority and status boards), Groups for the assignee board, Column sums and how often Jira refreshes it, then Save.

The gadget lists the board’s columns with their number of issues, a bar for each column’s share, and the chosen sum:

The gadget searches Jira as the person looking at the dashboard, so everyone sees only the issues they may see.

Keyboard

The cards of a board are one Tab stop. ↑ / ↓ move within a column, ← / → to the next column with issues, Home / End to a column’s first and last issue, Ctrl+Home / Ctrl+End to the board’s first and last issue. Enter or Space opens the card’s menu. In the tabs row, ← / → move between views.

Permissions and data

Issues stay in Jira. The app changes them through Jira’s REST API as you; every change appears in the issue history.
Stored by the app: your profiles, view tabs, capacities and shared views — in the app’s Forge storage inside your Atlassian site. Nothing is sent outside Atlassian: no external servers, analytics or CDNs.
Permissions it asks for: read and write Jira work (search issues, set due dates, priorities and assignees, run transitions), read users and groups (people filters), app storage, and Jira configuration (Jira requires it to list group members). For the Sprints view and ranking it also asks for Jira Software’s board, sprint and rank permissions.
On uninstall the saved profiles and views are removed with the app’s storage; the changes you made to issues stay.

See the privacy policy for details.

Troubleshooting

An issue is missing. It has no due date, is due more than 14 days from now, is Done (tick Show done issues), is hidden by a filter (Clear filters), or is in a project you cannot browse.
“Issues could not be loaded: …” — Jira did not answer the search. Press Retry.
“Profiles could not be loaded” / “Views could not be loaded” — the app’s storage did not answer. Press Try again; nothing is lost.
“These views were changed in another window.” — you changed your tabs in another browser window. Reload shows the current tabs; nothing is overwritten.
“This app’s licence is not active” — a Jira admin renews the subscription in Manage apps.
Dark mode — the board follows Jira’s theme.

Still stuck? Contact support.

The same board, with another column type first:

Priority Board — columns by priority, ranked like your backlog.
Kanban Status Board — columns by workflow status, with WIP limits and swimlanes.
Workload & Capacity Planner — columns by assignee and a capacity heatmap.

Deadline Tracker for Jira – User Guide and Setup