How to use Workload & Capacity Planner for Jira: the assignee board, drag-to-reassign, the capacity heatmap by person and week, filters, sprints and views.

Overview

Workload & Capacity Planner shows your team’s Jira work in two ways:

By assignee — one column per person you choose (or every member of the groups you choose), plus Unassigned. Dragging an issue to another person reassigns it in Jira.
Workload — a heatmap with people in rows and weeks in columns: the estimated hours of each person’s open issues due that week, against their weekly capacity.

It works across all your projects, or the ones you pick. Every change is made as you, with your own Jira permissions; the app runs on Atlassian Forge and stores only your saved filters, views and capacities, in your Atlassian site.

The hours come from Jira’s time tracking fields (original and remaining estimate). The app does not log time and does not track leave.

Install and open the planner

Install Workload & Capacity Planner from the Atlassian Marketplace (a Jira admin approves the permissions).
In Jira’s sidebar, open Apps and choose Workload & Capacity Planner.

Choose people in Assignees, or groups in Groups — the board stays empty (“Choose people or groups”) until you do. A group brings in every active member, also in large groups.

Rebalance by drag and drop

Reassign: drag a card to another person’s column. Drop it on Unassigned to remove the assignee. The ⋯ menu of a card has the same under Move to, for the keyboard.
Several at once: Ctrl+click (⌘+click or Shift+click) cards, or Select them in their menus, then Move to… in the bar “N selected”.
Undo: the message after a move has Undo, and Ctrl+Z (⌘Z) does the same — for every card of the last move.
If Jira refuses (the person cannot be assigned in that project, or you may not edit the issue), only that card goes back, with Jira’s reason.

The Unassigned column appears when you choose it, or when there are unassigned issues. Exclude it with Exclude people → Unassigned.

See the hours per person

Board settings (the gear next to Refresh) → Column sums adds a total to each person’s column header — the original or remaining estimate in hours, Story Points or another number field:

Done issues are not counted in the remaining estimate.

Swimlanes by project or epic

Swimlanes → Project (or Parent, Priority, Assignee) splits the board into lanes, each with its count; click a lane’s title to fold it. A card moves within its lane.

The other board settings: Card fields (Parent, Status, Due date, Labels, Components, Fix versions, Remaining estimate on every card) and Auto-refresh (off, or every 1, 5, 15 or 30 minutes). A column’s ⋯ menu also sets a WIP limit — handy as a “max issues per person” warning.

The capacity heatmap

Add the Workload view with + (Add a view) → Workload and choose people or groups.

Rows — the chosen people, then Unassigned.
Columns — Overdue, this week, the five weeks after it, and No due date. An issue counts in the week of its due date.
A cell — the hours of the person’s open issues due then (remaining estimate, or the original estimate when nothing remains recorded) and how many issues. Done issues are left out.
Colours — a week is green up to 80 % of the person’s capacity, amber up to 100 % and red above it. Overdue is red whenever it has issues.

Set each person’s capacity

Click 40h a week under a name and type the hours (1–168; empty goes back to 40). Press Save to keep it with the view.

The capacity field under Anna Kowalski being edited to 32 h a week, next to her row of hours; Ben Carter and James Lee below still show 40h a week.

See the issues behind a cell

Click a cell to list its issues, with their hours and due dates; click one to open it in Jira.

Then switch to the By assignee tab and drag the work from the red week’s owner to someone with room.

Across projects and sprints

Filter	What it does
Assignees	the chosen people (their columns or rows); “Unassigned” adds the unassigned work
Groups	every active member of the chosen groups
Projects	only these projects (empty = every project you can see)
Exclude people	hides these people’s columns
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

Find by key or summary, Mine and Unassigned narrow the cards on screen at once and are not saved.

More view tabs: By due date, By priority, By status (these two ask for a project first on this page), Sprints (Jira Software — move issues between the backlog and sprints of a Scrum board) and By field… (Labels, Components, Fix versions or a select field).

Profiles — the Profile select on the first tab keeps named sets of filters. Save stores them; type a new name and choose Create profile ”…” to add one; ⋯ → Delete profile… removes one.
Added views keep their own filters and capacities, saved into the view with Save.
Share with everyone (the ⋯ menu of a view) shares it as it is now; others add it from + → Shared views. The person who shared it and Jira admins can change it for everyone; others can Save as my view. The address follows the tab, so a link opens that view.
Export to CSV saves the cards on screen — key, summary, column, status, priority, assignee and due date — as a spreadsheet, made in your browser:

A dashboard gadget (Edit → Add gadget → Workload & Capacity Planner) shows the assignee board’s columns with their counts and sums; choose the Groups in its Configure.

Keyboard

The cards are one Tab stop: ↑ / ↓ within a column, ← / → to the next column with issues, Home / End and Ctrl+Home / Ctrl+End to the first and last issue; Enter or Space opens the card’s menu. Heatmap cells are buttons: Tab to one and press Enter to list its issues.

Permissions and data

Issues stay in Jira. Reassigning runs through Jira’s REST API as you; every change is in the issue history.
Stored by the app: profiles, view tabs, capacities and shared views, in the app’s Forge storage inside your Atlassian site. Nothing is sent outside Atlassian.
Permissions: read and write Jira work, read users and groups (people and groups filters), app storage, Jira configuration (Jira requires it to list group members), and Jira Software’s board, sprint and rank permissions for the Sprints view and ranking.
On uninstall profiles, views and capacities are removed; assignments stay in Jira.

See the privacy policy.

Troubleshooting

The board is empty: “Choose people or groups” — pick at least one person or group.
A heatmap cell shows 0h with issues in it — those issues have no original or remaining estimate.
Someone is missing — they are excluded, or not an active member of the chosen group.
“Issues could not be loaded: …” — press Retry. “Views could not be loaded” — Try again; nothing is lost.

Still stuck? Contact support.

Deadline Tracker — every overdue and upcoming issue across projects.
Priority Board — prioritize and rank the backlog by drag and drop.
Kanban Status Board — real workflow transitions with WIP limits.
OutSync — who is on leave, right on your Jira board, synced with Google Calendar.

Workload & Capacity Planner for Jira – User Guide