This epic was created after story #10143 that was too big to fit in as Story.

Functional overview

As of today, all "open and unplanned" artifact types are displayed in the "Backlog" section of "Top backlog". However this have several drawbacks:

• Backlogs tend to follow the law of universe: inflate without any foreseable end.
• It'a all about magic, stuff is appearing in the backlog (when created in trackers) without any obvious actions
• The backlog get filled with tons of un prepared stories making things difficult to manage (hard to "mature" stories from a Sandbox to a Ready To Do state).

The current proposal is to explicitly select what will appear in this backlog:

• All elements created directly from Top Backlog interface will, of course, be placed in "Top Backlog" bucket
• Elements created directly in the tracker by hand won't appear in the "Top Backlog"
  • There is a new action in Artifact view to manually add artifacts into the top backlog
  • This action is also accessible in mass change and/or in CSV import (for people that were used to create stories en masse with CSV)
• An element that is present in the Top Backlog (or later planned in a milestone) should be visually identified in the tracker view
• An element that is present in the Top Backlog only (not planned in a milestone) can be removed from the backlog:
  • From the Top Backlog view (mock-up to be proposed)
  • From the Artifact view (action menu again)
• It's possible to put an artifact in "Top Backlog" with the REST API
• It's possible to add artifacts in "Top Backlog" with XML import
• In Kanban view
  • An artifact that is part of the "Top Backlog bucket"  is visually identified
  • It's possible to add a card to the "Top Backlog bucket"
  • It's possible to remove a card from the "Top Backlog bucket" if not already planned (there are maybe 2 way to visualize the information)

What happens when:

• The hierarchy or the planning configuration is changed (and the previously selected backlog items are no longer valid from the configuration point of view)
  • The selection is cleared and there are no longer any artifacts in the top backlog.

Future work outside the scope of the current proposal:

• It's possible to view if an artifact is part of the "Top Backlog" bucket from the artifact Table Report  view (new column)
• It's possible to add an existing artifact to the "Top Backlog bucket" from the Top Backlog view (with current story it's only possible from artifact view)