Tag: Tricks

Jira Sucks, but it doesn’t have to

Rodney N.2 Comments

I’m betting you didn’t expect this title this week. Two things inspired this article. First, was this entry into the blog’s search performance.

This graph tells me that Google is returning my site when people are searching, “Jira sucks.” What’s more, people are clicking on the link. Not often, but still!  

The second event that inspired this post is another post someone did on LinkedIn explaining why they feel Jira is simply the worst. The odd thing is, every point they brought up is something a good Jira Admin can fix.  So I figured I’d look at why using Jira can be a terrible experience and how you can fix it for your users.

Also, a bit of a confession: usually, I like to have these articles ready by Tuesday before publishing AT THE LATEST. However, by that time, I didn’t have enough talking points to make a full article. So I had to go to social media to get feedback from the broader community! Thankfully you all gave me enough to round out the post. So, let’s get into the first of Jira’s sins.

“Jira makes it challenging to create an issue.”

I’ve seen this on almost every new instance I’ve worked on as a new Admin. The issue creation process is so arduous that most workers would rather not deal with it entirely. This experience often leads to the feeling that Jira as a whole sucks, because people don’t understand that that experience is unique to their instance. Let’s go into three factors that can lead to this experience, and what you can do about it.

Required Fields

This item is usually the biggest offender. For one reason or another, you will have a large number of required fields, which may be spread out between several tabs on the Issue Creation Screen. This format makes it so that your users have to play “Hide and Go Seek” with these required fields, click save, realize they missed one, and repeat. I’m hoping you can see how this can be frustrating to users.

I take two approaches to combat this. First, I limit the number of required fields. I do this by being diligent in asking “Why?” every time a project lead asks me to make a field required. I make sure their reasoning is sound, and that they intend to use it in some meaningful way. I also educate them about the fact that if they have too many required fields, people are going to put in junk information to get past the screen, making whatever report or information they derive from it useless. 

The second approach here is to put all the required fields front and center. That is, I put them all on the first tab, right at the very top. That way, users can tell what fields they need to fill out right away and get on with their lives. It just leads to a cleaner look overall, so it’s something I always recommend.

Too Many Fields

This one also causes a ton of headaches. People see they can customize their Jira with custom fields, and go a bit crazy. Doing so leads to a bloated, unfriendly look to Jira.  

I mean, imagine it. You are a user, and all you are trying to do is create a task to track some work you are doing. However, when you click “Create,” you are hit with a wall of empty fields to fill out. What’s your likely response? To fill it out, or say, “Eff this!” and do the work without the Jira issue?  

So, how do we combat this? Well, we always have to be diligent when creating new fields. Again, I remind you that the question “Why?” is your best friend. Find out the reason the project leads need a field. Do they want to use that information in a Dashboard? Or is it something they will need to help prioritize work? Or is it some vanity information that can live just as well in the issue description? Don’t be afraid to say “No” if the answer to that last question is “Yes.” Not only will this help with Jira’s appearance, but it will help your instance run smoother!

Secondly, we can organize the fields that we do have. Maybe only specific teams will need any subset of fields. Then we should set up tabs on the screens, which each tab representing each team. Or perhaps you only need a particular set of fields when you go to a specific status. You can have them pop up when a user transitions the issue into that status, so they don’t bloat the creation screen. The point is you have tools to organize fields, use them!

I can’t find my work in Jira.

This reason is another one I see a lot. People who aren’t familiar with Jira may find it hard to figure out how it’s organized, or where their work even is. That will lead to the opinion Jira is just too complicated and bloated. So how do we combat this?

Well, first things first – we have to talk about your system dashboard. This feature will be people’s first experience with Jira after logging in. So you will want to make sure it’s a welcoming one. Customize the introduction gadget to point to your documentation (we’ll get to that in a moment). Be sure that the “Assigned to Me” gadget is in place. However, if a user is genuinely new, they won’t have any issues assigned to them, so keep that in mind when designing your System Dashboard.  

Back to the documentation, you’ll want that in place. Jira hides its search functionality in a dropdown. Be sure people can readily find the documents to help them learn to use it. Searching issue data is Jira’s superpower, so you want to get people up to speed with that quickly. Also have documents about setting up dashboards available, and make sure people know they can create a custom dashboard to help them find their work.

And finally: workshops. As a Jira Admin, I try to hold regular seminars on JQL, creating Dashboards, tips and tricks with queries, and best practices. Some of these workshops I turned into the early posts on this blog! Be an active part of training your userbase in Jira. It will help combat the feeling that people can’t find their work.

I always have to buy an add-on to do simple tasks!

Oh boy. This one is a big complaint. And I get it: Apps are expensive. I’ve had to explain to more than a few Atlassian Partners that when I do a review, I have to get a trial license because I can’t afford to be buying (or renewing) an App a week. And if they restrict their trial license, that means I can’t do a full review.

Unfortunately, this one comes down to economics. How many employees do you think Atlassian has? The number will surprise you considering how big they are in the market, but the most recent figure I can find put them at around 3600 employees. And that’s everybody, from Custodial on up to the Founders.  

Let’s be generous and say a quarter of that number are software engineers. I have no backing for that number, but it’s an assumption, so bear with me. That means that 900 Developers are working on everything Atlassian has. Trello, Bitbucket, Confluence, everything. I counted about 20 different products offered from about the timeframe we are looking at. That means we have an average of 45 Developers per project. Now, I admit some products will have more developers than others. That’s not my point.

My point in all this is that there are only so many person-hours that can be put into features. As much as Jira wants to be the be-everything-do-everything, that takes time that they simply don’t have. So, what do you do? 

Their solution to this problem is well tested. Create an API that others can use, and allow an Add-on economy to develop. That way, Atlassian can focus on features that a larger group of people can use, and let App Partners develop more niche solutions. However, these Partners need to be able to feed their families. Some have whole businesses to support, which is why they tend to charge what they do. 

Jira sends to many emails!

My god, does Jira send out some emails! I’m sure every Jira Admin can sympathize with their users on this one. This one is objectively fact-worthy. 

The first thing I do here with a user like this is commiserate with them. I let them know that I interact with multiple projects each day, so I’ll get even more emails than they do from Jira. Acknowledge that they have a legit complaint.

Then I share with them how I manage it. I let them know how I go through, find all the issues I’m “watching,” and I unwatch any that are no longer relevant. This “fix” won’t help with current issues spamming you, but it does make a dent. I also show them how I sort Jira issues in Outlook so that I don’t miss anything critical, but am not bothered by an email every day.  

And finally, I let them know there is hope. Atlassian has announced during their last Summit that they will be implementing a feature to send out an email Digest of several updates, rather than a single email with each update. I cannot tell you how much I want this feature right now. This tidbit was honestly one of the happiest pieces of news from Summit.

And that’s it for this week!

Look, the point is your user’s experience – and thus, their outlook on Jira – is entirely in your hands. Always keep in mind that people use your system. Whenever you implement something, the question should be, “How will it impact the users?”

Honestly, I still have enough points for a followup article! You guys helped out a lot. But as I stated, I’m already running late enough on this post, so I think I’ll call it here. If you enjoyed this article, be sure to sign up below to get new posts delivered directly to your inbox! You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to get the latest news from the blog! Don’t forget to like, comment, and share the posts with your friends! But until next time, my name is Rodney asking, “Have you updated your Jira issues today?”

More JQL Tricks

Rodney N.5 Comments

Well, we’ve made it another week. And let me tell you what a week it was. You guys killed it on the previous post – it’s currently the second most viewed post on the blog – and on it’s way to becoming number one! Thank you all so much!

Today’s topic also mirrors another popular post. I am looking at several more JQL tricks you can use to optimize your queries. Some of these are suggestions that I got in response to my previous post, some are new tricks I’ve learned, and some are stuff I cannot believe I missed. Lets get rolling on this.

Starting with the Basic search

So this was one of the ones I got as feedback from my previous article on JQL, thanks to Ed Gaile. And the trick is so simple I am ashamed I forgot to include it. This trick is when you start building a new query – start in basic mode.  

Starting with the basic search will allow you to define parameters easily. Then, once you do so you can switch to Advanced, you can see and edit the JQL String.

One of the most significant benefits of using the basic mode first comes with adding a time-based parameter. When you do so, this handy pop up will appear to let you define your exact timeframe with no hassles!

membersOf()

We covered previously how powerful the currentuser() function is. It will let us easily customize a single query to whoever views it. Let’s consider this situation.

Your QA team consists of Bob, Lisa, Jerry, Beth, and Chris. You want a query that will return everything assigned to QA. And go!

Your first instinct is to write a query similar to this:

assignee in (Bob, Lisa, Jerry, Beth, Chris)

While functionally correct, this can cause problems. Let us say Jerry is tapped to become a Program Manager. You now have to go back and update your query. Tom joins the team now to replace the vacancy left by Jerry. Another update. What if there is another way?

If your team is within a JIRA group, you can reference that group directly in a query. Let’s assume the same situation, but we know the JIRA Admins use group jira-qa to manage permissions specific to QA. We can then replace the above query with the following:

assignee in membersOf("jira-qa")

The benefit here is that the Admins will update the group to change out Jerry’s job function and on-board Tom, so your query requires no changes to stay up to date.

If your instance is using Active Directory syncing, you might also be able to leverage AD Groups directly in JIRA. The benefit here is as your AD Groups are updated, the change is automatically reflected in JIRA, and therefore your query!

lastLogin()

So this one is very situational. Let us assume that as part of a triage operation, you want to make a query that shows everything that users created since the last time you logged into JIRA.  

You can write a query that looks for everything created in the past day, but that will only get half the data from the weekend. Plus, for most weekdays, that will include issues you’ve already triaged. Not ideal.

That is where the function lastlogin() comes in. This function will return a timestamp from your last login so that you can find new issues. In practice, it looks something like this:

issuetype=Bug and createdDate >= lastLogin()

This function also works with updatedDate and resolutionDate, so you can find issues that were updated or resolved since your last log in. For Triaging and reporting, definitely a good thing to have in your toolbox.

Filter using another filter

All right, here’s one I found as research for this post. And honestly, I didn’t even know it existed. You can reference another filter in your query, and add onto it!

filter = "Filter Name" AND ...

Yes, this is a real thing! You can use this trick to narrow down the results of a query further, or two build several variations on a query while abstracting out the common parts. It amazes me to this day that I can have studied this platform extensively for years, yet I can still find something I genuinely did not know!

Subscribing to a Saved Filter

So, let us go back to the Triage example from the lastLogin() section. You’re happy with the results, but you hate that you have to log in to JIRA each morning to get started. Maybe you’d like to review the results on the train while on your way to get a head start? You can use JIRA’s Mobile App, but that won’t remind you to do it.

There is a way to get JIRA to email you the result of your query on a set schedule. This trick is called a subscription, where JIRA will run the saved filter based on your permissions, and send you the results via email.  

To set up a subscription, first navigate to your saved Filter. Then click “Details -> New Subscription”

Once there, you can set up which groups (to which you are a member) will receive the query. You can also select “Personal Subscription” (which is the default) to send it to yourself. Afterward, select how often you would like to receive the filter results and click “Subscribe.” Congratulations, you will now start regularly receiving the Query results.


Searching through the Past

So, it is now time for “Admin Storytime” with Rodney. Once upon a time, a Project Manager came up to the brave JIRA Admin nervous. One of the villagers wasn’t too smart and had closed many issues that shouldn’t have been. The Project Manager was scared that this would mess up their project, so he needed our hero’s help in finding all the closed issues and reversing the dreadful curse. 

So what did the hero do? He did a historical searched using the Changed functionality. 

For those not familiar, you can use “changed” to take a look at what a field value was, who changed it, what they changed it to, and when they changed it. In this case, the query looked like this:

status changed to Closed by Villager after startOfDay()

I would note that not all fields support this kind of searching – in fact, the vast majority doesn’t. Status, however, is one I can usually search the history on, so it’s handy to keep in mind.  


sorting

Sorting your returns

So, most of the time, the order you get issues back in is not essential. But sometimes, it does help you understand the data if you can sort it by one metric or another. This situation is where the “Order By” function comes in.  

reporter = currentUser() order by created ASC, updated DESC

This function allows you to specify what order you’d like to receive the results. For example, you can sort it by date created in Descending (DESC) to get a list of results sorted from the newest to the oldest. Put the field you’d like to sort by, and then the direction you want to sort on, and you are off to the races.

You can also sort by more than one field. For example, you can first sort by the assignee to get an alphabetized list of issues by assignee, then sort by Updated to get the newest issues touched by each user on top of each user’s results.

I should note that not all gadgets respect the Order By function, so your mileage may vary on Dashboards, but it’s still something handy to keep in mind.

So, what are your favorite JQL Tricks?

As I have noted, some of these I got from your comments on the previous JQL post. So what other JQL tricks do you have? Post your favorite tricks, and I may share them on a future post!

If you are in the Atlanta, GA area next week, I’ll be speaking during the first half of the (Remote) Atlassian Community Event on how to set up Nagios to monitor Atlassian Applications. I hope you will join us!

Don’t forget to comment, like, and share this post on social media of your choice to help spread the word! As I said, you guys have been killing it this month on the numbers, and I want to see if we can get an all-time high! Also, be sure to follow me on twitter at @theJIRAguy.

And as one last note, check out the newest Atlassian Blog on the block, run by my good friend Kris. She will also be posting weekly! Her blog will be more focused on the Super-User aspect, so it should be an different yet much needed point of view. http://www.notesfromkris.com/

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



JQL – How have we not talked about this already?

Rodney N.6 Comments

Hello everyone! How has your week been going? This week we are going to talk about JQL – and honestly, I’m not entirely sure how this hasn’t come up already. I know I’ve provided a few queries here and there to help you in other topics, but today I’ll be talking about some of my favorite tips and tricks to get the most out of your queries. So without any more delays, let’s get into it.

Always about the Docs

So it’s been a while since I’ve included this section – but I feel this subject could be helped with some further reading. So for this, I am referencing two documents:

I should note that the function reference is for JIRA Cloud – so it does have some new functions that have not made it to server. However, the options I’m covering here will work for JIRA Cloud, JIRA Server, and JIRA Data Center.

Currentuser()

So, this first trick is one of my favorites, as it allows you to customize a query to be specific for whoever is viewing it. In your query, you can set a user field equal to currentuser(), and the function will return whoever is logged in and viewing the query. For example, let’s take the query:

assignee = currentuser()

And let us take a look at what that looks like when running from the Admin account, and my account:

Each one returns whatever is assigned to the specific user. What’s more, this would carry over to any dashboard that uses this query – allowing you to customize a single dashboard to whoever views it.

This also works with any user field: reporter, assignee, watcher – and even custom fields. This is a handy trick to have if you don’t like to spend your day making queries and dashboards…I mean, who would enjoy that, am I right…

Working with time

So, when I’m giving some training for JQL, the most common problem people have is working with time. “How do I search for stuff in the past?” “How do I work with time?”…it seems to be a challenge.

Here’s a trick that’s always helped me. Most databases store time in the Unix Epoch time format – which is simply counting the seconds between midnight of 1 Jan 1970 and today. This means that any time in the past will be less than the current time, and any time greater than now will be in the future. Same for JQL. The past is “less than” the timestamp you are looking at, and the future is “greater than”.

However, JIRA also gives us some handy functions so we are not having to spell out particular date. First off is now(), which simply returns the current timestamp whenever it’s run. Handy when just trying to find out what’s past due, such as in this example (courtesy Atlassian):

duedate < now() and status not in (closed, resolved)

In the above query, duedate < now() returns everything that has a duedate in the past, and status not in (closed, resolved) returns everything that is currently open – giving you an idea what is past-due.

DayWeekMonthYear
startingstartOfDay()startofWeek()startaOfMonth()startOfYear()
endingendOfDay()endOfWeek()endOfMonth()endOfYear()

These are great for establishing a time frame. The really powerful thing about the functions on this table is they take parameters, meaning you can adjust them forward and backward – to say find all the issues resolved last month:

resolutiondate > startOfMonth(-1)  AND resolutiondate < endOfMonth(-1)

In this query, we shift both startOfMonth() and endOfMonth() by -1. The minus (-) tells us it’s a previous time, and the one (1) tells us to shift one whole month, meaning both of these times return values for the previous calendar month. This gives us a handy time-box for our queries – which is great for a report.

Sprints and Versions

So, this section is for my JIRA Software teams out there.

When I’m a part of Agile teams, I like to have a dashboard we can all view that tells us what’s going on in the current sprint. For this, we can use the opensprints() function. I like to pair this with a project key query so that I only get the open sprint for my project, such as:

Project = "Project Name" and Sprint in openSprints()
Pardon the blur…I actually don’t have any open Sprints in my test instance, so I had to use my work instance.

A note on openSprints() is that it only supports the operators IN and NOT IN. Using an equal sign will cause the query to return an error.

There is also the operators futureSprints() and closedSprints(). However, these return ALL future and closed sprints, respectively, so further filtering will be needed to focus on any particular sprint (such as Sprint = “Name”)

So, let us say you are in a situation where you care more about what has and hasn’t been released than what is in any particular sprint. Then you’ll be interested in the functions latestReleasedVersions() and earliestUnreleasedVersions(). These operate on the fields AffectedVersion, FixVersion, as well as any custom fields with type Version. Let’s say you want to know what bug-fixes have gone out the door:

issuetype = Bug and fixVersion = latestReleasedVersion()

The neat trick about this query is that it will automatically update if your team releases a new version, meaning if you use it in a dashboard, it will always show the bugs fixed in the last released version.

Filtering out sub-tasks

So this one comes up often. A manager wants a dashboard, but they don’t want to get bogged down in the minutia of the sub-tasks. This a handy trick I use to filter out all sub-tasks from a query. I simply and the existing query with this clause:

issuetype not in subtaskIssueTypes()
  • Before filtering out Sub-tasks
  • After filtering out Sub-tasks

It’s a simple thing to add but is an easy way to filter out all sub-tasks. Because of how it works, if you add any new sub-task types to the project in the future, the filter will still work without needing to be updated.

Cleaning up watched issues

So, JIRA in its current form sends out A LOT of emails.

Just a *few* emails…

Atlassian has heard our cries, and they are working on it, but in the meantime – this is where we are. And as an Admin, you will be touching a lot of issues – which will put you on their watchers list automatically. So I find it helpful to run this JQL and clean things up every few months.

watcher = currentuser() and project not in ("Home Project A", "Home Project B", ...)

This gives me a list of all issues I’m watching on an instance that is outside of what I consider to be my “Home Projects” I use to organize my work. From there you can run a bulk change on the list, and on Step 2, choose the “Stop Watching Issues” operation. I don’t know if this honestly counts as a JQL trick, but it has helped keep me sane many a time.

And that’s all for this time!

Did you learn anything new? What are some of your favorite JQL tricks that I didn’t cover? If I get enough I’ll do a part 2 to this!

So it’s been a busy time for me. I decided to take advantage of the current time I have to study for my next ACP exam. It’s scheduled for May 8th, which doesn’t give me too much study time left. But hopefully, I’ll be sending out good news the following week!

My Wife and I also have been working on 3D printing face-shields for first responders – you can read about our efforts (okay, mostly her efforts) on her blog here: https://cadstories.com/2020/04/17/engineering-and-covid-19/

I also have a twitter account for the blog now! If that’s your preferred source of Social Media, give me a follow! I’ll be posting blog posts there, as well as anything else Atlassian related I find interesting! https://twitter.com/theJIRAguy You can also sign up here to get an email every time I publish a new blog post! Simply use the sign-up form at the bottom of this post!

Until next time though, this is Rodney, asking “Have you updated your JIRA Issues today?”

How to train your Workflows

Rodney N.Leave a comment

You know what? We’ve been a little system heavy the last few months. Lets try something different…

So, we all know JIRA workflows. They guide your issues through their life-cycle, apparently only know three colors, and otherwise just sit there, right? What if I told you that you can train your workflows to do tricks? It’s true!

Today we will go over some of the ways I have trained my workflows over the years, and when you’d want to use each trick. The ultimate goal here is to get you to see your workflow as an equal part of the issue life-cycle – that is to say not only as a faithful guide, but an active participant!

Some of these tricks will require a plugin to enable – but where so I will clearly mark them as such and give you a link to the plugin.

With that being said, let’s get into it.

Conditions, Validators, and Post Functions, Oh My!

So to get started, we’ll need to review the three parts of a transition: The Condition, Validator, and Post Function. Each of these are evaluated at a different part of the Transition execution, and therefore are able to do different things.

Conditions

These are evaluated any time JIRA needs to see if you are even able to see that the transitions exists. On the surface, seems straight forward enough. If a user doesn’t meet the conditions, they don’t see the transition, so what tricks could we do with that?

Trick: Secret Cleanup Transition

So, here’s the situation. As a part of your workflow, you require certain information be filled in to close issues normally. For example, you require a fix version be assigned to a new feature or bug. This is because your users had a bad habit of just closing critical bugs that really needed to be fixed.

Which is great, but as time goes along, the project lead comes to you, saying they have too many issues that being honest, they won’t ever get to. However, you realize that because of the requirements, you can’t just close those issues. You obviously don’t want to get rid of the requirements, but you want to enable the Project lead to do their cleanup. How do you do this?

We can do this simply with one condition! First we’ll add an “All” transition to the closed state we’ll call “Cleanup” Then we’ll put a condition on it that says only Project Administrators can see this cleanup transition. This way we don’t open up the workflow to the abuse we’ve previously tried to stop, but we give the Project lead the power to cleanup when they need to.

Validators

Validators are similar to conditions in the fact that they evaluate whether a transition could occur. However, the key different is WHEN they do their processing. Conditions are evaluated before a transition ever occurs. On the other hand, a validator is evaluated during the processing of the transition.

One thing Validators are great for is that when they fail, they provide an error message. When a condition fails, the relevant transition just doesn’t show up. From experience, this usually leads to a lot of panicked questions from new people saying “I can’t close an issue!” This problem is avoided entirely if you use a validator instead. “Oh, I can’t close it because I need a Fix Version – cool.”

Trick: Written Approval

Note: Requires JIRA Misc Workflow Extensions

So, you have an approval chain workflow, but you want to be sure whoever approved it really MEANT it. Lets say this involves a P.O. process, so you want to know whoever approves it really meant you to spend that money.

This is easy enough with JMWE’s “Comment Required” Validator. To make sure the phrase is added as, we’ll add a conditional to evaluate the comment field.

issue.getAsString("comment") != "I Approve"

This is a bit counter-intuitive, but the condition is what makes the validator active in JWME. Here, the validator only ever validates if the comment is anything other than “I Approve” – which includes an empty string! Having the comment be “I Approve” disables the validator and lets the transition occur!

Post Functions

Post functions have no evaluation purpose, but are executed “After” all conditions are evaluated and things are ready to move forward. This gives you a chance to update fields, fire off internal events or web-hooks, or a myriad of other tasks. Most of the time when I’m looking to automate some function that is based on a workflow, Post functions are where I’ll look to first.

Trick: Auto-assign on transition

So this is great for any situations where a specific person needs to do something on a specific status….such as an approval chain. This lets you set it up to reassign the issue on demand without having the user remember to take that action. Very Handy!

To accomplish this, we’ll use the “Update Issue Field” Post function, select “Assignee” from the drop-down, then select the last radio button to specify which user you’d like to transfer it to.

There are additioonal post functions from various Apps that will do the same thing, but you can do this with just vanilla JIRA Functionality.

Workflow Properties: The forbidden technique

Okay, so maybe I’m being a little dramatic…

Transition and Status properties are a powerful technique for customizing how your workflow behaves. However, they are somewhat hidden, dubiously supported, and tricky to get right. Basically, if you do choose to go this route, you will be pretty much on your own, with your only company being whatever articles you can google. By the way, Hi googlers! Welcome to the blog!

In general, I don’t really like to use Workflow properties, but there are some cases where they can’t be helped. One use case I’ve used them for is to limit who can reassign an issue in a given status…which being honest I learned from another blog.

To access the properties screen, select your transition or status of your choice, then click “Properties”

This will open up another screen where you can see a list of that item’s properties. By default there should be none.

Trick: Re-order the Transition buttons

So lets say you have a project lead that is a little…particular. They want the most relevant transition to be the first button, with anything else being second. But you can’t re-order the Transition buttons, right?

Well, I wouldn’t be writing this section if that was the case. We can use a property on each transition called opsbar-sequence. This is a setting that will allow us to specify which transition gets priority on the issue view screen. To do this, we’ll need to add the key “opsbar-sequence” to each transition, along with a unique value. It is recommend you increment the value by 10’s on each transitiono, so if you add more transitions later, you have a place to put them between existing transitions

Remember, in this arrangement, the lowest opsbar-sequence value will go first, with each increasing value following afterwards.

You are now a workflow trainer!

My goal here is to get you to think about different automations you can enable for your users. It may seem trivial to you, but if you can save them 10 seconds on each transaction, that can really add up over time. And you don’t have to stop with this list! Look over what post functions, validators, conditions, and yes even properties you have available, and keep an open mind when you get these unusual requests.

However, a word of caution. If you go crazy with these, you may find you have too many workflows and actions within workflows to manage. It’s best to think of it like candy. Every once in a while is fine, and can make you feel happy for a bit. But too much too often can make you regret it before too long!

As always, don’t forget to subscribe to be notified by email of new posts! You’ll find a signup form at the bottom of the post. Also don’t forget to check out our Atlassian Discord Chat! It’s still ramping up, but I’m always happy to see people getting questions answered there! https://discord.gg/mXuRsVu

But until next time, this is Rodney, asking “Have you updated your JIRA issues today?”