Laya Board for Jira

Laya Board is a free app for Jira, built on Atlassian Forge, that gives you a fast Laya-style board over your real Jira issues — inside Jira itself. Nothing is copied or migrated: the board reads and writes Jira directly, so every change is a real Jira change and Jira's own permissions always apply. Field edits, transitions and comments are made as you; a small set of agile operations — ranking and sprint or backlog moves — are applied by the app after checking your own Jira permission.

What Laya Board is

• A board experience over your existing Jira issues — the columns replicate your Jira board's own column configuration and order.
• Free: the app never paywalls any feature.
• Private by design: the app's screen in your browser only talks to Jira and to the app's own backend. Any calls to Laya.net happen server-to-server, and only once your site is linked.
• Usable on its own: you do not need a Laya.net account for the Jira board, and linking is optional.

Where it appears in Jira

• Project sidebar — a Laya Board entry opens the board for that project.
• Apps navigation — a Laya Board entry opens the boards hub, called Mission Control (page title Boards), listing every board in one place.
• Issue view — a Laya Board glance with an Open in Laya Board button.
• More-actions (•••) menus — Open in Laya Board on issues, agile boards and backlogs, and Open sprint in Laya Board on sprint cards.
• Command palette — Open Laya Board jumps straight to the boards hub.
• Jira Settings → Apps → Laya Board and each project's settings sidebar — the app's settings screen (covered in the admin guide).

Working on the board

The board chrome gives you Refresh, Studio, a Manage menu, Add external board, Create master board, Share externally and a Help menu. The board auto-refreshes every 30 seconds while the tab is visible, and again shortly after you return focus to the window.

• Dragging a card to another column runs a real Jira workflow transition. If no transition exists from the current status, the move is refused with "No workflow transition to that status from here."
• Re-ordering cards inside a column is saved to Jira's own rank, so the order you set is the order everyone sees.
• The Manage menu offers Sprint planner, Create Jira board, Create Laya board, Versions & components and Visible custom fields. Items you cannot use are greyed out with the reason — for example Versions & components needs the "Administer projects" Jira permission.
• Jira enforces every write: if a check of your permissions is inconclusive, the button stays available and Jira itself is the final judge.

Board Studio

The Studio button opens Board Studio, a drawer with five tabs: Overview, Theme, Columns, Cards, Effects. Theme offers background styles Plain / Gradient / Grid / Frosted, text sizes A− / A / A+ and density levels; Effects offers intensity Subtle / Standard / Lively and motion Full / Reduced / Off. The Overview tab shows a Current configuration summary with Quick actions and Manage sections.

Saved views and personal preferences

Saved views are stored in your browser, one list per board — they are not synced to an account. The same is true of several personal preferences, including interface scale, Mission Control density, starred external boards, panel and column widths, and the welcome card dismissal. Switching browser or machine starts those fresh.

What works without a Laya.net account

Everything on the Jira side works with no Laya.net account at all: the board, transitions, ranking, the Manage menu, the sprint planner and Board Studio. Buttons that need a linked workspace — such as Add external board, Create master board and Share externally — stay disabled with the tooltip "Connect Laya.net first" until your site is linked (and "Checking Laya connection…" while the app checks).

Linking to Laya.net

Linking uses a short pairing code that you approve on Laya.net — you never type a password into Jira, and no issue data leaves Jira as part of connecting. Laya.net receives only your site URL and account id to establish the link.

1. Start the connectionOn the board, choose Connect Laya.net. The Connect to Laya.net wizard opens with the subtitle "Link this Jira site to a Laya.net workspace" and shows a pairing code in the format XXXX-XXXX, with an "expires in m:ss" countdown.
2. Approve on Laya.netClick Approve in Laya.net. On the Connect an app to Laya page, enter the Connection code (codes are valid for 15 minutes).
3. Choose a workspaceOn the Grant access to workspace step, pick the workspace to link — each is badged Personal or Team — and click Approve access. The consent line explains the app will be able to read and write boards in that workspace, and that you can revoke this at any time from the workspace settings.
4. Finish in JiraBack in Jira the wizard shows "Connected to {workspace}" — click Continue. If something goes wrong you will see a clear card such as This code expired, Approval was declined or This code was already used, each with Try again.

Once linked, the previously disabled buttons come alive and Mission Control gains Roadmap, Open Laya workspace ↗, Compose master board and New board actions.

What linking unlocks

• External boards — two-way editable boards for Azure DevOps, monday.com, GitHub and GitLab, right inside Jira.
• Native Laya boards — boards that live on your Laya workspace and need no Jira permissions.
• [Master boards](/help/boards/master-boards) — one board layered from up to 50 source boards, with cards grouped into swimlanes by source board.
• Roadmap — the organisation roadmap, opened from Mission Control.
• Share externally — a public guest link so anyone with the link can view a board.
• Sync with your workspace — Jira changes stream into Laya, and edits made in Laya.net flow back into Jira through the app.

Day-to-day tips

• External boards are two-way editable from inside Jira, and fields a provider cannot back simply degrade to read-only with a friendly notice rather than pretending to save.
• A Jira project mirrored as an external board is read-only in that view — "This mirrored Jira board is read-only inside Laya Board — edits happen in Jira." Use the project's own Laya Board instead.
• The Backlog tab appears only where a backlog exists; on external boards it is disabled with "Backlog is managed in {provider}".
• Native Laya boards refresh every 6 seconds while visible; external boards every 30 seconds; the issue panel's comments and activity feed every 10 seconds.
• Changes made in Laya.net and written back into Jira appear in Jira's history as the Laya Board app by default — members who link their own Jira access in Laya get a per-user toggle to have their edits attributed to them personally. See people and assignee matching.
• The Help menu (Help & support) offers Contact support, Send feedback and Keyboard shortcuts.

FAQs