Throughline

Throughline documentation

See what's blocking a Jira issue and what's waiting on it — upstream and downstream, colour-coded by status, in one glance. No setup, any workflow.

What it does

Open a Jira issue and you can see its links, but not the shape of them. Throughline reads the issue's links and lays them out around it: everything it depends on — its blockers — fans out to the left (upstream), everything waiting on it fans out to the right (downstream), and anything already done collapses into a tray below. Each linked issue shows its key, summary, real relationship and status colour, so you can see what's holding the issue up and what you'll unblock when it lands — without opening every link.

Getting started

  1. Install Throughline onto your Jira site from the Atlassian Marketplace (a Jira admin performs the install).

  2. Open any issue.

  3. If the panel isn't already showing, add it once: in the issue's action bar click the Appsbutton (or the ••• menu) and select Throughline. It then stays on your issues.

There's nothing to configure — no link-type mapping, no settings.

Reading the map

The issue you're viewing sits in the centre. Linked issues are placed by the direction of the relationship, and coloured by Jira's universal status category, so it works on any workflow regardless of your custom status names.

What it means: Upstream (left) - Issues this one depends on - its blockers. Genuine blockers are marked blocking in red. Downstream (right) - Issues waiting on this one - what you'll unblock when it's done. Completed (below)- Related issues that are already done, collapsed out of the active flow. Related Links with no clear direction (for example "relates to"), grouped on their own.

Every row shows its real relationship wording — "is blocked by", "blocks", "is caused by" — taken straight from the link type, so nothing is renamed or guessed. Click any linked issue to open it, or use Copy keys to copy every linked key as a ready-made search.

How direction is decided

Every Jira link type defines an inward and an outward phrase. Throughline uses that to place each link: an issue you "are blocked by" (or "are caused by", "are gated by") sits upstream; an issue you "block" (or "cause", "gate") sits downstream. Because this comes from the wording every type already carries, it works on any link type — including ones you've renamed or created yourself. The red blocking marker is applied to recognised blocking relationships; an unfamiliar custom type is still placed correctly by direction, just shown without the marker.

What Throughline is — and isn't

Throughline shows one issue's direct dependencies. It deliberately does not roll up dependencies across an epic's children or your wider portfolio — it answers "what does thisissue depend on, and what depends on it?", not "what's the aggregated risk beneath this epic?". Because Jira links are point-to-point, a child blocked under another epic won't change the parent epic's view here. It is also not a planner or a scheduler, and it never scores or judges your work — it shows the dependencies and trusts you to read them.

Permissions, data and privacy

Throughline runs entirely on Atlassian's infrastructure (the "Runs on Atlassian" programme). It is strictly read-only and makes no external network calls — your data never leaves Atlassian.

  • It reads only the issue you are currently viewing — its links, subtasks and parent, along with the status and summary of the directly-linked issues.

  • It stores nothing and collects no personal data.

  • It honours your existing Jira permissions: it only ever shows what the viewing user can already see.

Full details are in our privacy policy.

Support

Questions, issues or feedback? Email gary@productiversed.com and we'll get back to you.