Guide
Due dates
When a work item has a due date, Statuswatch shows a countdown above the status rows. It has three parts: the label Due, the day or moment the item falls due, and a headline such as 3d 4h left. Below them sit a bar and a line saying whether the figures count working time or calendar time.
An item with no due date gets no countdown, and nothing else on the panel changes. When the status history cannot be read, the panel shows a short message instead.
The figures are a snapshot taken when the panel loaded. Nothing counts down while you watch, and a due date changed in Jira appears only on the next load.
Working time or calendar time
Business hours are off by default, per project. With them off, the countdown counts plain calendar time, nights and weekends included.
With business hours on, the countdown runs under the same calendar as the rest of the panel: the project's working hours, and whichever of its calendars applies to this item. Nights, weekends, breaks and holidays are then skipped, so a weekend does not eat into the deadline. A d then means one working day — the day configured for that calendar, minus any break.
The line under the bar says which is in force: Working time only — weekends, breaks and holidays are skipped. or Calendar time, including nights and weekends. Every figure below is counted in whichever one applies.
Business hours are switched on with the toggle Count business hours only on the project's own settings page, under Apps → Statuswatch. Saving it needs project admin or Jira admin permission.
If the project's working hours cannot be read, a warning appears above the figures: This project’s working hours could not be read just now, so the times below are calendar time — nights and weekends included.
The headline
The countdown has one reference point: now on an open item, and the moment it finished on a finished one. The wording, the colour and the bar are all judged from that point.
| Situation | Headline |
|---|---|
| Open, time left before the due moment | 4h left |
| Open, before the due moment, no time left to count | Due now |
| Open, past the due moment | 6h overdue |
| Open, past the due moment, no time counted since | Overdue |
| Finished by the due moment | 1d 2h to spare |
| Finished by the due moment, no time counted between | On time |
| Finished after the due moment | 6h late |
| Finished after the due moment, no time counted between | Late |
So left and overdue are the gap between now and the due moment; on a finished item, the gap between the finish and the due moment, read as to spare or late. Durations show at most two units, with the remainder dropped rather than rounded, so 3d 4h 59m reads 3d 4h. Under a minute reads <1m.
The headline is red when an open item is past its due moment, and when a finished item finished after it. An item that made the date is never red, however long ago the date went.
Lateness is judged by the clock, not by the hours counted. An item finished on Monday morning against a Friday deadline is late, even though no working hours passed in between — which is why a late item can read Late with no duration beside it.
The bar
The countdown bar is thicker than the status bars below it. It is red under the same rule as the headline — an open item past its due moment, or a finished item that finished after it — and blue otherwise.
The fill is the share of the deadline consumed: the time from creation to the reference point, over the time from creation to the due moment. It is capped at 100% and never falls below a 2% sliver.
Where there is no time at all to count between creation and the due moment — an item created after its deadline had gone, say — there is no fraction to take. The bar then shows full if the reference point is at or past the due moment, and only the sliver if it is not.
Finished items
An item counts as finished when it is currently in a status in the Done category. The countdown then stops at the moment it reached Done rather than running on to now, and the headline becomes a verdict: time to spare, or late.
An item that was resolved and later reopened is not finished. Its countdown goes back to counting against now.
What "end of day" means
Jira's due date carries a date only: no time, no time zone. The moment it falls due is therefore a convention, and Statuswatch picks the end of that day — the end of the working window with business hours on, midnight with them off, in the calendar's own time zone. A project that has never saved these settings has no calendar of its own, so that zone is UTC, not the team's.
When business hours are on and the working day ends before midnight, the panel shows the moment it used. It is rendered in the reader's own time zone and date format, so a reader in another zone sees the same instant at a different clock reading, sometimes on a different date.
Otherwise the due moment is midnight, and naming it would show the following day: 13 Aug 00:00 is the end of the 12th. The panel writes the typed date followed by , end of day instead — which is what every item shows with business hours off.
A due date is never pushed off a weekend or a holiday. An item due on a Saturday under a Monday-to-Friday calendar simply has no working hours left on its last day.
What the countdown does not do
Statuswatch reads the due date from Jira's own field. It never changes it, and sends no reminder, email or notification about it. The countdown is shown to whoever opens the panel, and nowhere else.