Subject: Clarification on Impact of “Issues → Work Items” Change on REST APIs

[SarveshLowanshi]

Hello Atlassian Support Team,

We’ve noticed that Jira Cloud has started changing terminology from “Issues” to “Work Items” in the UI.

We rely heavily on the Jira Cloud REST APIs, especially endpoints such as:

/rest/api/3/issue
JQL queries using issueType, issue.status, etc.
Webhooks and automation rules that reference issues

Can you please confirm the following:

1. Will there be any change in the REST API field names or response payloads (e.g., issue, fields.issueType, etc.) due to this UI update?
2. Will existing JQL queries, automation rules, and dashboards that use the word “issue” continue to work as-is?
3. Are there any upcoming API version changes or deprecations planned related to this terminology update?
4. Will Atlassian eventually expose “Work Items” in the API, or is it only a frontend label change?

We want to ensure that our custom integrations and connectors continue working smoothly without needing code changes.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[remie]

Hi @SarveshLowanshi,

Welcome to the community forum! Please note that this is exactly that: a community forum, not an Atlassian Support channel. Although Atlassian staff use this forum to post announcement and engage in discussions with the developer community, please do not rely on this forum for Atlassian to read / respond to your questions!

Now with regard to your question, there might be more information in this thread:

Work is the new collective term for items tracked in Jira

We’ve always believed that Jira’s power has been its flexibility to represent all kinds of work; whether they be tasks, ideas, launches, stories, requests, bugs, or anything else. Going forward, instead of referring to your work as ‘issues,’ Jira will call the different items you track exactly what they are: work. Your feedback, questions, and suggestions are welcome to help ensure a smooth transition with these updates. The issue with ‘issues’ When Jira started as a bug-tracking tool for sof…

I hope this helps!

[SarveshLowanshi]

Hi @remie,

Thanks for the welcome and the clarification!
I understand this is a community forum and not an official Atlassian Support channel. However, this question is quite important and urgent for my work, so I’m trying to reach out here as well to get insights from experienced community members.

Could you please share the best official channel or support link where I can raise this question directly with Atlassian Support or Product teams?

Meanwhile, here’s the question I’m looking to get help with regarding workflow transition order standards and project-level transition APIs:

Request: Workflow Transition Order Standards & Project Transition API

In our Jira setup, we’re seeing that transitions like Backlog → any status or In Progress → any status are allowed in some workflows. This creates inconsistency and makes it hard to define a standard transition order.

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What We Need Help With

1. Is there an Atlassian-defined standard workflow transition order?
   For example:

Backlog → Selected for Development → In Progress → Done

2. Is there any REST API to fetch all transition names (including custom ones) for a project?
   We know about:

GET /rest/api/3/issue/{issueKey}/transitions

But this only returns transitions from the current status — not the full transition map for the project.

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Goal

We want to:

• Understand standard transition paths
• Audit or visualize all transitions (custom or standard) per project

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Desired Flow (Standard)

Backlog → Selected for Development → In Progress → Done

But currently, transitions like Backlog → Done or In Progress → Backlog are allowed, which breaks that structure.

Any official guidance or API suggestions would be appreciated!

Thanks,
Sarvesh