{"meta":{"title":"Quickstart for GitHub Issues","intro":"Follow this brief interactive guide to learn about GitHub Issues.","product":"GitHub Issues","breadcrumbs":[{"href":"/en/issues","title":"GitHub Issues"},{"href":"/en/issues/tracking-your-work-with-issues","title":"Issues"},{"href":"/en/issues/tracking-your-work-with-issues/learning-about-issues","title":"Learning about issues"},{"href":"/en/issues/tracking-your-work-with-issues/learning-about-issues/quickstart","title":"Quickstart for GitHub Issues"}],"documentType":"article"},"body":"# Quickstart for GitHub Issues\n\nFollow this brief interactive guide to learn about GitHub Issues.\n\n## Introduction\n\nThis guide demonstrates how to use GitHub Issues to plan and track a piece of work. In this guide, you will create a new issue and break it down into sub-issues. You'll also learn how to add labels, issue types, milestones, assignees, and projects to communicate metadata about your issue.\n\n## Prerequisites\n\nTo create an issue, you need a repository. You can use an existing repository that you have write access to, or you can create a new repository. The repository must have issues enabled. For more information about creating a repository, see [Creating a new repository](/en/repositories/creating-and-managing-repositories/creating-a-new-repository). For more information about enabling issues if they are disabled in your repository, see [Disabling issues](/en/repositories/managing-your-repositorys-settings-and-features/enabling-features-for-your-repository/disabling-issues).\n\n## Opening a blank issue\n\nFirst, create an issue. There are multiple ways to create an issue; you can choose the most convenient method for your workflow. This example will use the GitHub UI. For more information about other ways to create an issue, see [Creating an issue](/en/issues/tracking-your-work-with-issues/creating-an-issue).\n\n1. On GitHub, navigate to the main page of the repository.\n2. Under your repository name, click ** Issues**.\n\n ![Screenshot of the main page of a repository. In the horizontal navigation bar, a tab, labeled \"Issues,\" is outlined in dark orange.](/assets/images/help/repository/repo-tabs-issues-global-nav-update.png)\n3. Click **New issue**.\n4. In this example, we will start with a blank issue. Your repository may use issue templates and issue forms to encourage contributors to provide specific information. If your repository uses issue templates, click **Open a blank issue**.\n\n## Filling in information\n\nGive your issue a descriptive title. The title should convey at a glance what the issue is about.\n\nAdd a description that explains the purpose of the issue, including any details that might help resolve the issue. For example, if this is a bug report, describe the steps to reproduce the bug, the expected result, and the actual result.\n\nYou can use markdown to add formatting, links, emojis, and more. For more information, see [Writing on GitHub](/en/get-started/writing-on-github).\n\n![Screenshot of the new issue form, with a title and body filled in.](/assets/images/help/issues/issue-title-body.png)\n\n## Adding a task list\n\nYou can also use plain text to track tasks that don't have a corresponding issue and convert them to issues later. For more information, see [About tasklists](/en/get-started/writing-on-github/working-with-advanced-formatting/about-task-lists).\n\n![Screenshot of the new issue form, with the title and body filled in. The body includes the Markdown for a task list.](/assets/images/help/issues/issue-task-list-raw.png)\n\n## Assigning the issue\n\nTo communicate responsibility, you can assign the issue to a member of your organization. See [Assigning issues and pull requests to other GitHub users](/en/issues/tracking-your-work-with-issues/assigning-issues-and-pull-requests-to-other-github-users).\n\n![Screenshot of the new issue form. In the right sidebar, the \"Assignees\" section is outlined in a dark orange.](/assets/images/help/issues/issue-assignees.png)\n\n## Adding labels\n\nAdd a label to categorize your issue. For example, you might use a `question` label and a `good first issue` label to indicate that an issue is a question that a first-time contributor could pick up. Users can filter issues by label to find all issues that have a specific label.\n\nYou can use the default labels, or you can create a new label. For more information, see [Managing labels](/en/issues/using-labels-and-milestones-to-track-work/managing-labels).\n\n![Screenshot of the new issue form. In the right sidebar, the \"Labels\" section is outlined in dark orange.](/assets/images/help/issues/issue-with-label.png)\n\n## Adding issue types\n\nYou can add an issue type to classify work across the organization. See [Managing issue types in an organization](/en/issues/tracking-your-work-with-issues/using-issues/managing-issue-types-in-an-organization).\n\n![Screenshot of the new issue form. In the right sidebar, the \"Type\" section is outlined in dark orange.](/assets/images/help/issues/issue-type.png)\n\n## Adding the issue to a project\n\nYou can add the issue to an existing project and populate metadata for the project. For more information about projects, see [About Projects](/en/issues/planning-and-tracking-with-projects/learning-about-projects/about-projects).\n\n![Screenshot of the new issue form. In the right sidebar, the \"Projects\" section is outlined in dark orange.](/assets/images/help/issues/issue-project.png)\n\n## Adding milestones\n\nYou can add a milestone to track the issue as part of a date based target. A milestone shows the progress of the issues as the target date approaches. See [About milestones](/en/issues/using-labels-and-milestones-to-track-work/about-milestones).\n\n![Screenshot of the new issue form. In the right sidebar, the \"Milestone\" section is outlined in dark orange.](/assets/images/help/issues/issue-milestone.png)\n\n## Submitting your issue\n\nClick **Submit new issue** to create your issue. You can edit any of the above fields after creating the issue. Your issue has a unique URL that you can share with team members, or reference in other issues or pull requests.\n\n## Adding sub-issues\n\nYou can add sub-issues to an issue to quickly break down larger pieces of work into smaller issues. Sub-issues add support for hierarchies of issues on GitHub by creating relationships between your issues. You can create multiple levels of sub-issues that accurately represent your project by breaking down tasks into exactly the amount of detail that you and your team require. See [Adding sub-issues](/en/issues/tracking-your-work-with-issues/using-issues/adding-sub-issues) and [Browsing sub-issues](/en/issues/tracking-your-work-with-issues/using-issues/browsing-sub-issues).\n\n![Screenshot of the sub-issues section below the issue description. The \"View more sub-issue options\" button is highlighted with an orange rectangle.](/assets/images/help/issues/sub-issue-drop-down.png)\n\n## Adding issue dependencies\n\nYou can define blocking relationships between issues using issue dependencies. Issue dependencies let you identify issues that are blocked by, or blocking, other work. See [Creating issue dependencies](/en/issues/tracking-your-work-with-issues/using-issues/creating-issue-dependencies).\n\n## Communicating\n\nAfter your issue is created, continue the conversation by adding comments to the issue. You can @mention collaborators or teams to draw their attention to a comment. To link related issues in the same repository, you can type `#` followed by part of the issue title and then clicking the issue that you want to link. For more information, see [Writing on GitHub](/en/get-started/writing-on-github).\n\n![Screenshot of an issue comment. The header says \"octocat commented now\" and the body says \"@hubot Do we also need to update the rocket logic?\"](/assets/images/help/issues/issue-comment.png)\n\n## Next steps\n\nYou can use issues for a wide range of purposes. For example:\n\n* Tracking ideas\n* Collecting feedback\n* Planning tasks\n* Reporting bugs\n\nTo break your issue down into more manageable tasks, you can add multiple levels of sub-issues. See [Adding sub-issues](/en/issues/tracking-your-work-with-issues/using-issues/adding-sub-issues).\n\nHere are some helpful resources for taking your next steps with GitHub Issues:\n\n* To learn more about issues, see [About issues](/en/issues/tracking-your-work-with-issues/about-issues).\n* To learn about the essentials for using GitHub's planning and tracking tools, see [Planning and tracking work for your team or project](/en/issues/tracking-your-work-with-issues/learning-about-issues/planning-and-tracking-work-for-your-team-or-project).\n* To learn more about how projects can help you with planning and tracking, see [Learning about Projects](/en/issues/planning-and-tracking-with-projects/learning-about-projects).\n* To learn more about using issue templates and issue forms to encourage contributors to provide specific information, see [Using templates to encourage useful issues and pull requests](/en/communities/using-templates-to-encourage-useful-issues-and-pull-requests)."}