After a recent upgrade, I was going through the ticket queue and saw a ticket that caught my eye. Someone was stating that the direct-to-comment link was missing after the upgrade – and as they used that link often in their team’s workflows, so this was seriously hampering them.

I dug into the issue only to find this was not a bug but an intended change. So yes, rather than using the internationally recognized and accepted link icon, Atlassian decided to move that link to the comment’s timestamp. I mean, I get trying to move your design to look more unified, but you should move towards the better UI. And at the point people think a feature has been removed entirely, that clearly isn’t it. 

However, this change was already posted and being considered in Atlassian’s bug-tracking Jira instance, along with thousands of others. So today, I thought I’d look at some of these issues and let you know what you can do to help move these forward so they can come to a future Jira version near you. 

The recent past and future of this blog.

So, where have I been?

Well…it’s complicated. First, as many of you know, I’m not a full-time blogger. This place is very much a second job for me. However, it’s not the one that pays bills, so sometimes, my day job has to take priority. Over the past few weeks, I have had to adjust my schedule to work in different time zones. While not my favorite thing to do – it was necessary in this case. But this left me exhausted with little energy to dedicate to something else.  

Then the complication is that I just have not been feeling that creative as of late. I look at my backlog of ideas, and nothing on there really inspires me. Seriously, it’s LONG overdue for a grooming session. Combine that with the fact that the major algorithms out there demand consistency above all else, and it’s an easy recipe for creative burnout.  

So between the two, I’ve been taking an unannounced break. Which is to say – I’ve not been posting. Instead, I’ve been reading a lot, taking care of the home front, playing with some interesting tech, and absorbing content from other Atlassian creators.   

That leads me to this next point – I don’t know if I’ll be coming back to writing every week. Maybe someday, but right now, let’s ease back into it with an every other week rotation. My biggest problem is that most of my ideas have a bit of a “been there, done that” feel. But that is something you can help with!  

Send me your ideas for a post; if I like them, I will add them to Backlog 2.0. Likewise, if I have an old article you think needs a second look or updating, let me know! This blog is as much yours as it is mine, so letting me know what you want to hear about is the best way to ensure it sticks around!

Now, on with the show!

You and jira.atlassian.com

Before I get down this rabbit hole, I should explain a few things.  

Having a bug tracker isn’t an uncommon thing. I mean, that’s how Jira got its start, so I assume you, as Jira Admins and users, would understand that. One of many things that made early Atlassian stand out was their bug tracker was public. I doubt they were the first to have a public bug tracker, but in the late 00s, most companies viewed it as airing your dirty laundry to everyone else. So Most companies didn’t do it. 

But bugs happen, and it’s not like users don’t know that. So instead, Atlassian established https://jira.atlassian.com (I’ll call it JAC from here on out) and made it publicly accessible. What does this do? Several things.

First, they can get bug reports directly from those impacted users and admins, rather than relying on it filtering in exclusively from QA tester, Support personnel, and field agents – all places where valuable information can be lost. 

Second, it allowed users to verify if some odd behavior of their Jira instance was, in fact, a known bug or something new. This feature has saved me I don’t know how much time and anxiety over the years. Whenever I see Jira doing something odd or wrong, my first stop is to JAC and see if anyone else has seen this, and if so, add my vote. In speaking of Votes…

Atlassian’s Bug tracker (which, again, IS Jira) also allows people to vote on issues that also impact them. This feature means you can also see how much impact a particular bug fix or suggestion will have. Again, this is invaluable data to have while deciding what to prioritize. 

So, now that you’ve been introduced to JAC let’s look at some featured bugs, issues, and suggestions from there. 

JRASERVER-72757 – Lack of a Permalink feature in the new view in Jira 8.17 and later

Created: 31/Aug/2021

So this is the ticket that started me down this road. This change seems like it would be simple enough to revert, but so far, the Server/DC version of this change hasn’t moved much from where it’s gathering interest.

The thing I cannot understand – looking between the Cloud version of this bug and the Server version – is the order of events. The Cloud version was created in 2018 and was resolved in May 2021, three months before the Server version of this issue was created.  

So we had a change that Atlassian made in Cloud, was made known to be a wrong move, reverted, AND THEN the same problem brought to Server/DC? 

JRACLOUD-77091 – JQL with projectsLeadByUser() returns an error if one of the projects is Archived

Created: 27/Jul/2021

So, some of the good hygiene you should be practicing in your instance is archiving projects you aren’t using. So what happens when doing so breaks JQL filters? Well, that is precisely the situation we have in this bug report.

If you ever wondered if Issue Votes make a difference in what Atlassian selects to work on, I think this bug demonstrates that fact well. Unfortunately, it hasn’t moved much in the year plus since it was created because it doesn’t appear to be widespread. That is why voting on bugs and suggestions is important if you are experiencing a bug (or perhaps just want to help out those who are).  

CONFSERVER-14910 – Provide ability to override Lucene tokenisation and stemming and search for exact text (literal search)

Created: 13/Mar/2009 (yes, you read that correctly)

As the counterpoint to the above “Votes matter,” I give you the grandfather of them all. A baby born when this ticket was created would now be a teenager. I’m bringing this up not because of anything in the issue itself – though I love that people post birthday cakes for this ticket’s birthday. Instead, it’s to show Atlassian’s priorities in action.

You see, Atlassian cloned this ‘suggestion’ into the CONFCLOUD project at some point, and its clone has already been reclassified as a bug and is now in the short-term backlog.  

The problem here is that anyone who has tried to do searching in Confluence knows what a pain this is. Finding what you want is something of a challenge in and of itself. This bug isn’t wholly responsible for that – the search UI leaves A LOT to be desired – but it also doesn’t help. So it is reasonable to say that both issues need to be done – but despite the original’s age and notoriety, only the clone is moving forward.  

JRASERVER-60152 – Gadget does not show title in wallboard mode

Created: 10/Mar/2016

The last bug I will feature today is a bit of a pet peeve. In this one, Jira does not display the name of a gadget when in wallboard mode. Which means you have no context for the data you are presenting.

But honestly, this is another step beyond the real problem – you cannot name gadgets. The “name” they display is just that of their filter or project. This ‘solution’ is better than nothing, but a Gadget can show very different information even on the same filter – just based on how it’s configured. Think of two pie chart gadgets using the same filter – except one shows assignees, and the other shows statuses. You’d use one to show who might be overloaded and the other to show where possible bottlenecks are in your process. But they’d both have the same name.

Honestly, this issue is a step in the correct direction, but I’d prefer a new “Name” option on gadgets. If it’s left blank, you can defer to the old behavior. But give us the option to give our data analytics some context. 

So, what can I do?

So, while it’s not the only thing they consider, Atlassian does consider the vote count on issues in their bug tracker. So, if you agree with these issues, please log in with your Atlassian account and vote on them!  

You can also share them with your friends! Getting these to be more widely known will undoubtedly help get them votes. My close friends and I have a “vote brigade” arrangement, which is where all these issues came from today. We can post issues, and when everyone else has time, they go and vote on them.  

And lastly, be patient. I’ve spoken about this in past articles, and I feel it’s worth reiterating. Atlassian is not the biggest company. They are growing – and fast at that – but there are still only so many hours in the day. And with those limited hours – only so many suggestions and bug fixes they can cram into a given work cycle. So please understand that if they don’t get to your bug right away, at least they are being open about its status! More than I can say about some companies!

So, I’m back…ish.

What are some of the issues you are tracking in JAC? Did you discover any today that are also impacting you? Let me hear about it!

As I stated earlier, I’d also love to get your ideas for content! You can submit ideas via the form here or email me at [email protected].

You can also find my social media links on Linktree! So please follow, like the post, and leave a comment to appease the almighty algorithms. I’m sure you know the drill by now!

You can also subscribe directly to the blog! Doing so gets you an immediate notification when a new post is published – directly to your inbox! To subscribe, just put your email below!

But until next time, my name is Rodney, asking, “Have you updated your JAC issues today?”

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