Rachel Wright is an entrepreneur, Certified JIRA Administrator, and author of the JIRA Strategy Admin Workbook. She started using JIRA in 2011, became a JIRA administrator in 2013, and was certified in 2016. She is the owner and founder of Industry Templates, LLC, which helps companies grow, get organized, and develop their processes.
Let’s say you create specific Jira issue types because you want to collect a different data set for each type, and because want the different issue types to use different workflows. So what do you do next? How do you tell Jira what information to collect for each issue type? Should you create screens or a field configuration scheme first? What’s the difference between an issue type scheme and an issue type screen scheme? How do you associate an issue type with a workflow?
Understanding Jira schemes and how they interact with each other is one of the most important, and most challenging parts of Jira administration. My new Advanced Jira Administration course will help you understand:
The nine different Jira schemes and what each one does
Where to find the schemes used by a given project
The hierarchal relationship between screen schemes and issue type screen schemes
The correct order for creating screens, screen schemes and issue type screen schemes
How to remove a screen, screen scheme or issue type screen scheme
How to share schemes across multiple projects
When and how to create custom schemes
And much more
The course contains challenges, quizzes, downloadable handouts, and personal stories.
In this course, we’ll discuss real-life Jira scheme examples, areas where it’s easy to go wrong, and best practices for creating and managing schemes. The course includes clear explanations, demonstrations, and challenges (with solutions!) to try in your Jira application.
Once you understand Jira schemes you’ll have the keys to unlock Jira efficiency and scaleability.
Take “Jira: Advanced Administration” with Rachel Wright
Life is short. Jira is complex. There simply isn’t time to make all of the mistakes and learn everything you need to know by trial and error. I’ve compiled over eight years of lessons learned in my Jira Basic and Advanced Administration courses. The advanced course is available now on LinkedIn! It will help you navigate the complexities of Jira and find the right balance between user support and application functionality. Take this course to correctly configure your application and make sure it stays clean, manageable, and flexible.
Course Structure
The Jira: Advanced Administration course picks up where the Jira: Basic Administration course leaves off. The advanced course is designed to help you understand and internalize Jira concepts by including:
Real world examples of what to do, and what not to do taken from my personal experience
Explanations of the latest Jira jargon (ie. Company-managed projects vs team-managed projects)
Tips and best practices
Demonstrations
Challenges that you can try in your own Jira application
Quizzes to ensure understanding and build your confidence
Handouts
And more
While the examples used in the course are from Jira Software, the lessons can also be applied to Jira Service Management and Jira Work Management projects. All deployment types (Cloud, Server, and Data Center) are included.
Course Content
The course takes a deep dive into topics such as configuring global permissions, understanding scheme hierarchy, creating custom schemes and custom workflows, managing project settings, working with groups and roles, and controlling access to information.
Your job as a Jira administrator is to give your teams the functionality they need and ensure the long term health of your Jira application. We’ll discuss when and how to make customizations and how to choose from the thousands of available Jira apps and extensions.
Finally, we’ll also look at advanced Jira features such as creating issues from email and issue collectors, importing data into your Jira instance, and streamlining process with automation.
Knowing the best way to solve a problem and how it will impact your application in the future is the difference between a good Jira administrator and a great one. If you’re a newly minted Administrator, an experienced JA looking for guidance on taming an overgrown Jira instance, or a determined perfectionist who’s trying to set things up right the first time – then this course is for you!
Jira is the industry standard for tracking work, tasks, and strategic company initiatives. The software is infinitely flexible and customizable, which is both a blessing and a curse. The goal of the Jira administrator should be to configure application settings to support the needs of the organization and ensure the health of the application in the future. This requires an intimate understanding of Jira’s capabilities, global options, and scheme configuration.
In this advanced Jira administration course, you’ll learn:
The most important configuration options like general settings and global permissions
How schemes work together to power Jira projects
How to create custom projects, issue types, workflows, screens, and custom fields
How to manage project-specific settings like components and versions
Working with groups and roles for easy user management
How to restrict access and share information with permission, issue security, and notification schemes
Ways to extend Jira with apps, connections, and integrations
Advanced features like importing data, creating issues from email, adding custom events, and automation
And more
“Knowing the best way to solve a problem and how it will impact your application in the future is the difference between a good administrator and a great one.” – Rachel Wright
In case you need some inspiration, here are 65 ways you can use automation in Jira to make your life easier. You can accomplish all of these with built-in automation, workflow extensions, and scheduling apps!
Communicate Information
Send additional notifications
Notify the project manager when an initiative is approved
Notify customers when their feedback or bug is addressed
Alert the legal and customer service teams when a new product launches
Use an integration or a webhook to notify your team’s chat room of certain Jira events
Send weekly updates
Send a report of all the issues you worked on this week
Show instructions
Provide an on-screen message, after a workflow transition, to remind a user to perform a task they frequently forget to do
Automatically create issues
When product features change, automatically create an issue for the legal team to revise the terms of service
When there’s an outage, automatically notify customer service so they can be ready to address trouble reports
If a customer support request requires development work, auto create the issue and assign it to the right team lead
Add watchers
Automatically add previous assignees as watchers
Add comments
Add a comment to any automatically closed issues, explaining why and how to reopen issues if needed
Add a canned response based on a label
Communicate requirements
Require users to link issues to their related initiative
Automatically remind business owners to attach project requirements
Update Information
Automatically update issues based on certain criteria
Assign issues based on custom field data like a certain skill needed or a specific office location
Automatically assign issues to users in a list
Add high priority bugs to the “Next unreleased version”
Set a due date based on a creation date
Update issues based on a JQL result
Automatically log work on a workflow transition
Update information in a child issue with information from the parent
Automatically update the due date for all linked issues
Automatically transition issues
If a code review is rejected in Crucible, automatically transition the Jira issue back to “To Do” status and notify the developer that there’s a problem
If a code branch is created in Bitbucket, automatically transition the Jira issue from the “To Do” status to the “In Progress” status
Automatically reopen a closed issue if a customer adds a comment
Close an Epic when it’s Stories are closed
Close all Sub-tasks when a Task is abandoned
Conditionally update issues
Only update issues with a specific priority level
Only update issues with a certain component selected
Log additional details
When an approval is given, add the user’s name and the timestamp to custom fields, to easily see and report on that information
Automatically increment a number field each time an event occurs
Count how many times an issue went into the “On Hold” status, was reopened, or was reassigned
Repeat Frequent Tasks
Create issues on a specific or recurring schedule
Automatically create all scheduled maintenance tasks each quarter
Automatically create all regression testing tasks
Clone an issue each week for the next two years
Create issues based on components
For each new hire, automatically create an issue for each application or resource the user needs
For each new product, automatically create all the marketing tasks
Create reminders
Create sub-tasks to remind yourself to log time at the end of each week
Remind the customer to verify their request is resolved
Remind the assignee to review an issue not updated in the last two days
Calculate information
Automatically calculate the hardware purchase cost based on quantity
Automatically calculate the level of effort based on estimates
Automatically calculate the mileage fee based on travel miles
Automatically calculate the training cost based on number of requests
Sub all logged time for an initiative
Create related issues
When a request requires development work, automatically create an issue for the dev team and link it to the customer request
Sync Information
Updated related issues
When information changes in a parent task automatically update the child task
Use regex to find issues mentioned in other fields and automatically link them together
Sync data between multiple Jira applications
Sync information once an hour or once a day
Sync data with other tools
When case details are added in Salesforce, automatically provide that information in the related Jira issue
Automatically create requests from emails or chat conversations
Perform Maintenance
Delete old data
Automatically delete old attachments to free up space or for compliance reasons
Schedule admin tasks
Periodically look for changes in the list of users with application administrator access
Close old issues
Schedule a JQL query to find all bugs older than 2 years and automatically close them
Close all requests not updated by the customer in 7 days
Close duplicate issues
When an incomplete issue is linked as a dupe, automatically transition the issue to “Done”
Send Alerts
Meet deadlines
Find overdue tasks and alert the project manager
Notify agents of approaching SLA deadlines
Alert the hiring manager one week before a new hire arrives
Send an alert when a project reaches 80% of it’s budget
Manage missing information
Alert an employee if their expense reimbursement issue is missing receipt attachments
Alert a project manager if an important task is missing approval
Surface high priority information
Send alerts for high priority bugs, incidents, or impactful issues
Detect and alert users to specific problems or key phrases
Catch undesired behavior
Detect the word “password” to make sure a user hasn’t exposed their credentials
Catch users skipping the QA test step before work is deployed to production
Have more ideas? Share them in the comments section below!
Where are you on your Jira journey? Automation means different things to different people and we’re all likely at different stages of our journey.
Level 1
If you’re still using paper forms to request things at your organization, then adopting Jira might be the first step in automating your processes.
Level 2
Then after using Jira for a little while, you start to explore the built-in time saving features like component auto assignment, workflow behaviors like triggers, conditions, validators, and post functions, and custom notification events.
Level 3
And finally, there’s the third level, where you want to extend Jira past its standard capabilities with apps, integrations, or scripting.
Let’s uncover the capabilities in level 3! Tempo is proud to present this recording with Rachel Wright showing real life use cases and how you can benefit from automating your Jira instance. This session includes opportunities, 25 ways automation can make your life easier, and real examples featuring Jira Cloud’s built-in automation and marketplace apps like: Automation for Jira, Jira Miscellaneous Workflow Extensions (JMWE), Jira Workflow Toolbox, and JSU Automation Suite for Jira Workflows.
“Spend 25% of your migration project auditing what you have, understanding your configuration and the apps you have installed, how much data do you need to migrate, and if you even need to migrate all the data. Upfront planning is the key to your success.”
Join Rachel Wright and Manuel Pattyn from iDalko, a Platinum Atlassian Solution Partner, as we discuss Jira migration. In this episode of iDalko Live, we cover how to plan your migration, handle Jira apps, choosing the right Jira Cloud plan for your needs, involving end users in the migration process, and more.
Listen in podcast format or read the written transcript on the iDalko website.
If you have Jira Software and Jira Service Management, how do you know which project admin links are for Jira project settings and which are for service management features?
While both Jira Software and Jira Service Management settings work together to power support projects, it’s helpful to know which links are for which application type so you can consult the correct documentation and information.
Here’s a handy list and and some differences between links in the Cloud and Server deployment types.
Project Admin Area
To get to a project’s admin area click the “Project settings” link in any Service Management project. It’s at the bottom of a project’s left sidebar. In Jira Server, the link takes the admin to the “Request types” page by default. In Cloud, the link takes the admin to the “Details” page by default.
Service project admin in Server
In Server, the first set of sidebar settings are common to all Jira projects. Those links include: Summary, Details, Re-index project, and Delete project.
Further down the page are settings specific to Jira Service Management (JSM) projects. The first link in the section is labeled “Request types”.
The additional links below are for standard Jira project settings like issue types, workflows, screens, and more. You might also have additional links for managing third-party app settings.
Service project admin in Cloud
In Cloud, the Jira and JSM settings are ordered differently. For example, the second section shows the Jira issue types and the JSM request types together.
Settings List
Here’s a handy list of the typical sidebar links and which application type they belong to.
Jira Software
The following settings are used by software-type projects:
Summary
Details
People (Cloud only)
Re-index project (Server only)
Delete project
Issue types
Workflows
Screens
Fields
Priorities
Versions
Components
Users and roles (Server only)
Permissions
Issue Security
Notifications
Project links
Development tools
Issue collectors
Jira Service Management
The following settings are used by service-type projects:
Change Management (Cloud only)
Request types
Customer permissions
Language support
Portal settings
Email requests
Customer notifications
Widget (Cloud only)
Satisfaction settings
Knowledge base
SLAs
Calendars
Automation
Apps (Cloud only)
Incident management (Server only)
Need help using or configuring Jira Software or Jira Service Management settings? Take my LinkedIn Learning courses to understand capabilities and best practices.
Hi, I’m Rachel Wright, Certified Jira administrator and author of the Jira Strategy Admin Workbook. I started using Atlassian products in 2011 and attended my first user conference in 2013. At that event, I learned about the Atlassian user group program and immediately signed up to be a community leader. The program has grown and changed a lot since then. Back then there were only 30 leaders (cities) and now there are hundreds! It’s great to see and be a part of it.
Atlassian recently revamped their recognition program, so I received 7 years worth of gifts and swag in one big shipment! It was like Atlassian Christmas in my RV.
I wanted to share the unboxing with you and show you some of
the cool items you’ll receive as you gain tenure, host local events, and
contribute to the online community.
I seem to be having some trouble with this box. Good thing I’m better at Jira administration
than box opening.
Here is the perk for year 7. It’s a light-weight suitcase, with packing organizers, and a enamel pin to commemorate the year. There are only two types of luggage in this world, carry on and lost. I’m excited to carry this on my flight to Vegas, next year, for Team 2022. I’ve already started packing.
Next, is a cap, business cards, and an enamel pin for year 2.
Early on in my Atlassian community journey, I founded the
Northern Virginia user group and hosted local events for users and admins. The perk for hosting 5-9 evens is this exclusive
t-shirt.
Without an in-person conference this year, to restock my
Atlassian shirt supply, my wardrobe desperately needs some new threads.
The next item is this fantastic North Face down jacket. This packs down well and is really warm. Of course, there’s also a five-year pin.
The first-year items are a pin and an insulated thermos for hot or cold drinks. On top is a removeable cup that’s magnetic. This is perfect for chilly nights around the campfire.
The next item is an ACE-themed duffel bag and a pin.
The last item to unbox is a sweet pair of custom Vans shoes. Of course, there’s a pin for year number 3 as well.
With all my goodies unwrapped, I transform from Rachel
Wright to Atlassian-ified Rachel Wright. Oh, and don’t forget a view of the
custom shoes.
Thanks, Atlassian and here’s to another 7 years! Being a community leader has so many benefits beyond trips and swag, but these perks sure make me feel appreciated.
Atlassian Team 2021, formally known as Summit, is the annual user conference. This event brings Atlassians, customers, users, and partners together for a few magical days of announcements, demos, and discussions. This year Atlassian created the ultimate digital experience to discuss the evolution of modern work, building better teams, scaling innovation, and thriving in an increasingly digital and distributed world.
Here are my favorite quotes from the 2021 Atlassian user conference.
“Simply using Jira doesn’t mean you’re agile.”
– Claire Drumond, Atlassian Head of Product Marketing, Jira Software and Agile
I audibly laughed at this statement during Claire Drumond’s session titled “Jira brings agile to all teams“. I’ve completed over a hundred consulting projects and I’ve yet to encounter a real agile team. Organizations hire consultants to “make them agile”, use tools and terminology to “become agile”, and sometimes simply declare they are “switching to agile” – tomorrow! The teams that say they’re agile, sure look more “wagile” (a mixture of “waterfall” and “agile”) to me.
What I love about Jira is that it can support any framework or methodology – including no methodology at all. You can configure Jira to match the way you work. Even so, one day, I hope to see a truly agile team in action. I’d love to personally experience the efficiencies gained from how agile is meant to work. Until then, I’ll keep observing and learning.
“If you want a thing done well, do it yourself let automation do it.”
– John McKiernan, Atlassian Product Marketing Manager, Jira Software
As John McKiernan said in his “Make Jira work for you with automation” presentation, “this is the automation age.” For many of us, Jira is mission critical software and the single source of truth in our organizations. Because “Jira never sleeps”, you can use automation to make it your personal assistant. If you’re new to building automation rules in Jira Cloud, check out this demo to quickly get started. Automation is a fun topic but John’s terrific sense of humor and self-described “monotone Irish voice” makes this a useful and entertaining Team 2021 session.
Want to learn more about automation in Jira Cloud, Server, and Data Center? Join me and Tempo on May 12, 2021 for our webinar “How Automation Makes Us Unstoppable“. Register Free
“Include Jira issue keys in your development work and Jira will update itself!”
– Justine Davis, Atlassian Head of Product Marketing, DevOps
Meet Atlassian’s new Jira integration solution, Open DevOps. It’s “a pre-configured DevOps project that combines Atlassian products with partner offerings” you’re already using like GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Slack, Jenkins, and more. Atlassian reduced the ~50 steps needed to connect all your tools together to just six! I’ve always encouraged users to include Jira issue keys in code commits, in notes in other tools, and in email subject lines. Now that good habit pays off even more. Issue keys link everything together, allowing Jira to update itself, inform stakeholders, and provide better project tracking and insight.
–Claire Maynard, Atlassian Head of Product Marketing, New Products & Solutions
Jira and Confluence can surface progress data, but it’s still difficult to aggregate information, from all the individual tasks, to understand project status as a whole. Enter Team Central, Atlassian’s new solution to curate information and provide real-time status updates. I hope one day soon we can all cancel our status meetings and use the new views in Team Central instead.
I’m also really excited about the external collaboration feature coming to Confluence Premium and Enterprise.
“The fundamental reality is we can’t bring [new Cloud features] to Data Center.”
– Mike Cannon-Brookes, Atlassian Co-Founder and Co-CEO
One of the coveted perks of being an Atlassian Community Leader, is the ability to periodically chat with Atlassian leadership. In an “ask me anything” session with Mike Cannon-Brookes, a fellow leader asked if there is any plan to bring some the awesome new Cloud features to Data Center. The answer is generally no, as Cloud and Data Center are built on different platforms, with different technologies, using different languages. Atlassian will continue to invest in both platforms but in different ways which means different paths and capabilities.
While that’s not what everyone wants to hear, its the honest truth, which I appreciate. The Cloud platform has additional abilities that simply aren’t suitable for or possible in Data Center. A huge benefit of the Cloud framework is that it allows Atlassian to bring new products to life much faster. For example, Atlassian announced Point A, a program “where good ideas become amazing products”. Point A includes five new products in various stages of availability.
The new products are:
Jira Work Management is a reimagined version of Jira Core that adds new ways of working for business teams. There are new timeline and calendar views and new features like form functionality.
Team Central helps you stay up to date without endless status meetings. It provides a custom information feed and statistics to take the pain out of progress reporting.
Compass is “mission control for distributed teams”. This digital dashboard helps you understand and track services across your entire organization. No more wondering who manages the VPN, who’s on call tonight, or where to report an email outage.
Jira Product Discovery helps product owners and project managers explore, prioritize, and schedule initiatives. Collaboration in Jira no longer starts at the development phase!
Halp is a communication engine for support teams. Quickly track, automate, and humanize conversations with internal or external customers.
There’s no doubt that the way we work will never be the same. Here are some Team 2021 quotes that explore that common theme.
“Investing in the digital infrastructure that supports productivity and collaboration” allows you to “hire in more places” and take advantage of the “huge increase the available talent pool.”
– Stewart Butterfield, Slack CEO and Co-Founder
As someone who’s worked remotely for most of my career, it’s great to see organizations embrace this reality and trust employees to get work done outside of traditional hours and office walls. Except for time zone challenges, companies are no longer constrained to hiring locally. The world just got more competitive, and I think that’s a good thing.
A decade ago, I ran a team of developers split between three locations and two countries. I distinctly remember leadership assuming that employees who worked from home were probably watching TV and playing video games all day. I was told that team members who worked from home would be forgotten, passed over for promotions, and be seen as unnecessary. Nonsense! This opinion was based in fear and not on evidence. This year, more than any, has proven exactly the opposite. As long as people have the tools and support needed to be successful, they can be successful anywhere.
Watch “The evolution of modern work” to see how Atlassian, Slack, and Zoom have championed remote work for themselves and their customers.
“COVID-19 accelerated the role of agile transformations by a decade.”
– Sean Regan, Atlassian Head of Product Marketing, Software Teams
The global pandemic forced us to think differently and tackle challenges in new ways. Organizations achieved things quickly and accomplished things they didn’t think were even possible. Changes that would have previously taken months to plan were achieved in days.
It’s good to see existing technology become more mainstream and new technologies emerge. I’ve seen positive changes in other industries too. For example, my primary doctor pioneered telemedicine in 2003. He conducted his own experiment and learned that 66 percent of patients required no physical exam to address their problem. He could provide effective service for those customers over the phone or over email. I live on the road, so telemedicine isn’t just a “nice to have”, it’s vital service. But until recently, none of my other health care providers offered similar capabilities. Thankfully, more and more providers are now entertaining the idea. Next, we must convince the holdouts to ditch their antiquated fax machines and provide a modern (and more secure) way to share medical records.
Online learning and communication methods have become more robust and accessible too. Zoom started as a business tool but quickly became a verb. Even my retired mother, who once told me she “downloaded the cloud” knows exactly what Zoom is and how to use it to communicate with friends.
It’s interesting to see all the ways technology improves our lives both in and out of the office. It’s great to see companies like Atlassian evolving and experimenting. Their willingness to innovate and take risks trickles down to all of us who use and love their products.
In the near future, some will work in offices, some will continue to work remotely, and others will do both. Atlassian’s made a bold decision to become a remote and digital-first company.
For years I put on uncomfortable dress shoes and endured the dutiful commute to a physical office. It took 40 minutes to drive seven miles. I burned time and gas to work on a laptop, occupy space in a expensive building, and communicate with colleagues (in different offices) over chat and video. Why? Looking back it was a super waste of time and resources! Additionally, I got so much more done on the days when I didn’t go to the office. For many, a hybrid model makes a lot more sense, saves time and money, and boosts morale too. I’m glad that more employees will have additional environment opportunities going forward.
Each Atlassian user conference is different than the year before and each year I walk away with new ideas and a fresh new perspective to consider. This year I’m inspired to think differently when solving problems. How many opportunities do we miss because we take too long to decide or to act? Sometimes I’m too focused on perfection, so progress takes forever. What if we gave more consideration to solutions that aren’t constrained by what’s possible or available right now? If we think it’s not possible then it’s truly not possible! What if we don’t squander the acceleration we’ve gained? What if we made more decisions as if some invisible force was chasing us? Sure, sometime we’ll fail, but sometimes we’ll succeed as well. I have a lot to think about. In the mean time, I’ll try to find more ways to automate repeatable tasks in my work and personal life. And I’ll try to appreciate how incredibly far we’ve come during a very challenging time.
Even though I enjoyed this remote event, I really miss seeing my Atlassian ecosystem friends in person. My fingers are tightly crossed that next year’s user conference will be in-person. I need to catch up on all the missed hugs and my Atlassian wardrobe badly needs a refresh too. Mark your calendars for April 5-7, 2022 and let’s all hope for the best!
Sometimes it’s important to understand how far your Jira application has strayed from the default configuration. Was that setting there from the beginning or did an application administrator add it eons ago?
To find out, visit Admin > Issues > Notification schemes in your application. Then use this baseline list to compare your Jira settings to the default.
Initial settings for Jira Cloud and Jira Server/Data Center v8.15 are included below. I keep fresh and untouched application instances around so you don’t have to!
Jira Software Cloud, Server & Data Center Notifications
