GitHub Issues & Projects – Auto-close issue project workflow

[github-staff]

We shipped a new workflow to auto-close issues in Projects!

🪄 Auto-close issue project workflow

The auto-close issue workflow allows you to automatically close issues when their project status is changed to "Done" ✅ or any custom status you define (🙅 say goodbye to repetitive clicks).

how.it.works.mp4

Implementing the new workflow

For existing projects anyone with write or admin access can enable the new auto-close issue workflow on the workflows page.

auto-close-workflow.mp4

For new projects the auto-close issue workflow will be enabled by default.

✨ Bug fixes and improvements

Enterprise Managed Users can now use public project templates and copy public projects
Changed the behavior to apply a secondary sort field from the view configuration menu and also the table column menu

[stoutgz]

Hello! I just enabled the feature! Thanks for rolling out this welcome change. Some suggestions:

It looks like it's based only on a single possible value. I'd like to present my use case and mention the plausible solutions:

My board has several statuses, 2 of which represent different 'closed' states. there's 'Done' and 'Not doing'. It would be sufficient if, for this automation, that the "When the status is updated" value:

could be a multi-select, meaning I can choose 1 or more different status values, then the action that follows would be to close it.

An even better solution, since Github issues supports closing issues also supports 2 different closed states:

it would be great if I could also choose the resulting closed state for the action, to close as 'completed' or 'not planned'. And then allowing me to create multiple of these workflows.

Thanks for the new feature & thanks for listening 🤝.

[goldieowner17]

Thanks for the feedback! I've routed it to the team!

[sunnyi101]

Thank you for the suggestions! I've added this request to our backlog for future consideration :)

[bofstein]

Adding support for wanting this! I have been googling a while trying to figure out how to have it auto-close from two possible statuses figuring I just wasn't seeing the option, but I guess it's a request. We similarly have multiple statuses that we'd want to auto-close an Issue for. I'd love to be able to generally make my own Workflows instead of the presets, defining the inputs from a broad list that lead to the action from a large list. The Default Workflows seem to be the only options as far as I can tell with little ability to customize.

[einaren]

What happens if an Issue is tracked in several Projects? Even other-peoples-projects. If I close an Issue on one of my repos, which someone else is tracking in their project - how to avoid it's being auto-closed in their project?

I fear this feature is similar to this: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/17308

[sunnyi101]

If an issue is tracked in several projects, the workflow will close that issue in all projects. We do offer an option to disable the auto-close issue workflow on the workflows page. I've added this request to our backlog for future improvement of our current functionality. Thank you for your feedback!

[sgilflores3]

It would be a good addition to have

[lpitton]

Awesome!

Looking forward to some customization for workflows, such as the ability to monitor specific statuses and populate custom fields accordingly. I've already tried some out-of-the-box solutions, but the webhooks don't inform us when certain statuses are changed :(

[nexkate]

@sunnyi101 Could we have a feature that auto close project when a specific tag is used and issue is closed (both requirement meets)? Currently, it ables to auto add a project if a specific tag is used. Also, could we have a feature that a tag to use to change project status? Like To QA tag to change project status from “To triage” status to “pending testing”. It would be helpful to me

[qualityjohn-sc]

Is this coming to GitHub Enterprise Server? The workflow is not present in v3.12.5

[justin-ssv]

This doesn't seem to work when using the Board view and moving it to the Done column.

[shot-codes]

Is there a solution for this in the other direction? I.e I have an issue that gets closed because a pr contains closes #123. When the PR is merged I would like the status to change to 'done'.

[AlanGreene]

Doesn't this already work?

This is the default for me when I create a new project.

[shot-codes]

Ah yes that does work. Sorry, not versed in github projects and I went to google before exploring the existing workflows. Thanks!