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In this package, you will find:

The author biography

A preview chapter from the book, Chapter 3 'Issue Management'
A synopsis of the books content
More information on JIRA Essentials Third Edition

About the Author

Patrick Li is a cofounder and senior engineer at AppFusions. AppFusions is an expert
in developing and packaging integrated solutions for many enterprise applications
and platforms, including IBM Connections, Jive, Atlassian, Google Apps, Box,
Dropbox, and more.
He has worked in the Atlassian ecosystem for over 8 years, developing products
and solutions for the Atlassian platform and providing expert consulting services.
He is one of the top contributors to the Atlassian community, providing answers
and advices on forums such as Atlassian Answers and Quora.
He has extensive experience in designing and deploying Atlassian solutions from
the ground up and customizing existing deployments for clients across verticals,
such as healthcare, software engineering, financial services, and government agencies.

JIRA Essentials
Third Edition
Over the years, JIRA has grown from a simple bug tracking system designed
for engineers to manage their projects to an all-purpose issue tracking solution.
As it has matured over time, JIRA has become more than an application, it has
transformed into a platform, with a suite of other products that are built on it,
enabling it to adapt and deliver value to a wide variety of use cases.
JIRA 6 is the latest major release of JIRA and its product family. It comes with
new features that include support for service desk applications and enhancements
made to existing features such as providing flexible and robust workflow design
and agile methodology support. In this book, we will cover all the basics of JIRA
and its core capabilities as a feature-rich, issue-tracking system, as well as
add-ons that add additional features to the JIRA platform.
Packed with real-life examples and step-by-step instructions, this book
will help you become a JIRA expert.

What This Book Covers

This book is organized into eleven chapters. The first chapter starts with setting
up your own JIRA, and the subsequent chapters will introduce key features and
concepts. With each chapter, you will learn important concepts such as business
processes, workflows, e-mails, and notifications. You will also have the opportunity
to put your newly-acquired knowledge into practice by following a live JIRA sample
implementation.
Chapter 1, Getting Started with JIRA, serves as the starting point of the book and
aims to guide you to set up a local copy of a JIRA application that will be used
throughout the book. For seasoned JIRA experts, this will both refresh your
knowledge and also introduce you to the changes in JIRA 6. By the end of
this chapter, you should have a running JIRA application.
Chapter 2, Project Management, covers how to set up projects and projectrelated administration tasks in JIRA. The concept of schemes is also introduced
as it is the core concept of JIRA administration.
Chapter 3, Issue Management, covers everything related to issue creation and
the operations that can be performed on an issue (excluding workflow transitions).
Furthermore, this chapter touches on the various aspects of issues, as they are the
focal point of JIRA. This chapter also serves as an opportunity to show and allow
you to set up dummy data that will be used by the sample project.

Chapter 4, Field Management, covers how JIRA collects data through the use
of fields and how to expand on this ability through the use of custom fields.
This chapter then continues with the various behaviors that can be configured
for fields.
Chapter 5, Screen Management, builds on the preceding chapter and explores
the concept of screens and how users can create and manage their own screens.
This chapter ties in all the previous chapters to show the power behind JIRA's
screen design capabilities.
Chapter 6, Workflows and Business Processes, explores the most powerful
feature offered by JIRA, workflows. The concept of issue life cycles is introduced,
and various aspects of workflows explained. This chapter also explores the relationship
between workflows and other various JIRA aspects that have been previously covered,
such as screens. The concept of JIRA extensions is also briefly touched in the sample
project, using some popular free extensions.
Chapter 7, E-mails and Notifications, focuses on how to get automatic e-mail
notifications from JIRA and explores the different settings that can be applied.
This is a very important and powerful feature of JIRA and also a critical part
of the example project featured in this book. This chapter also ties in the
workflow chapter and explains in detail how JIRA manages its
notification mechanism.
Chapter 8, Securing JIRA, focuses on the different security control features
offered by JIRA. As this topic affects all aspects of JIRA, all previous topics
are touched on, explaining how security can be applied to each. It also covers
LDAP integration, where you can hook up your JIRA with an existing LDAP
system for user management.
Chapter 9, Searching, Reporting, and Analysis, focuses on how data captured
in JIRA can be retrieved to provide various types of reporting features. It also
covers the changes introduced in JIRA 6.
Chapter 10, JIRA Service Desk, covers the new JIRA Service Desk product,
an add-on to transform JIRA into a fully-fl edged service desk solution. It looks
at installing add-ons, setting up service desks, and defining custom SLA metrics.
Chapter 11, Advanced Features, covers advanced features that can help to change
your JIRA into more than just a traditional issue tracking system. It looks at how
you can run agile projects with JIRA through the use of JIRA Agile and how you
can turn JIRA into an effective feedback collection system.

Issue Management
In the previous chapter, you saw that JIRA is a very flexible and versatile tool
that can be used in different organizations for different purposes. A software
development organization will use JIRA to manage its software development
lifecycle and bug tracking, while a customer services organization may choose to
use JIRA to track and log customer complaints and suggestions. For these reasons,
issues in JIRA can represent anything that is applicable to the real-world scenario.
Generally speaking, an issue in JIRA often represents a unit of work that can be acted
upon by one or more people.
In this chapter, we will explore the basic and advanced features offered by JIRA for
you to manage issues. By the end of this chapter, you will have learned the following:

Issues and what they are in JIRA

Creating, editing, and deleting issues

Moving issues between projects

Expressing your interest in issues through voting and watching

Advanced issue operations, including uploading attachments and

linking issues

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Issue Management

Understanding issues
In JIRA, an issue can represent any number of things. In fact, an issue in a given
project may mean something that is very different in another project. So what an
issue really is depends on the context of what project it is in, and how you choose to
define and use JIRA. For example, an issue in a normal software development project
would often represent a software bug, while in a help desk project it can represent a
support request.
Despite all the different objects an issue can represent, there are a number of key
aspects that are common for all issues in JIRA, as follows:

An issue must belong to a project.

It must have a type, otherwise known as an issue type, which indicates what
the issue is representing.

It must have a summary. The summary acts like a one-line description of

what the issue is about.

It must have a status. A status indicates where along the workflow the issue
is at a given time. We will discuss workflows in Chapter 6, Workflows and
Business Processes.

JIRA issue summary

As we have discussed, an issue in JIRA can be anything in the real world to represent
a unit of work or a task to be completed. It can be a software bug, a help desk ticket,
or a customer request. However, what does an issue look like in JIRA? How does
JIRA achieve this level of flexibility and still present it in a consistent manner?
Let's first take a look at an issue in JIRA. The following screenshot shows a typical
example of an issue and breaks it down into more digestible sections, followed by an
explanation of each of the highlighted sections in a table. This view is often called the
Issue Summary or the View Issue page.

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Issue Management

These sections are described in the following table:

Section

Description

Project / Issue Key

It shows the project the issue belongs to. The issue key is the
unique identifier of the current issue. This section acts as a
breadcrumb for easy navigation.

Issue Summary

It is a brief summary of the issue.

Issue View Options

These are the various view options for the issue. The options
include XML, Excel, and Word.

Issue Operations

These are the operations that users can perform on the issue,
such as edit, assign, and comment. These are covered in the later
sections of this chapter.

Workflow Options

These are the workflow transitions available. Workflow will be

covered in Chapter 6, Workflows and Business Processes.

Issue Details / Fields

This section lists the issue fields such as issue type and priority.
Custom fields are also displayed in this section. Fields will be
covered in Chapter 4, Field Management.

User Fields

This section is specific for user-type fields such as assignee and

reporter. Fields will be covered in Chapter 4, Field Management.

Date Fields

This section is specific for date-type fields such as create and due
date. Fields will be covered in Chapter 4, Field Management.

Vote / Watch Issue

These are the options that allow users to vote and watch an issue.

Attachments

These list all the attachments in an issue.

Comments

These list all the comments that are visible to the current user.

Working with issues

As we have seen, issues are the center of JIRA. In the following sections, we will look
at what you, as a user, can do with issues. Note that each of the actions will require
you to have specific permissions, which we will cover in Chapter 8, Securing JIRA.

Creating an issue
When creating a new issue, you will need to fill in a number of fields. Some fields are
mandatory, such as the issue's summary and type, while others are optional, such as
the issue's description. We will discuss fields in more details in the next chapter.
There are several ways in which you can create a new issue in JIRA. You can choose
any of the following options:

Click on the Create button at the top of the screen.

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Press C on your keyboard.

This will bring up the Create Issue dialog box, as shown in the preceding screenshot.
As you can see, there are quite a few fields, and the required fields will have a red
asterisk (*) mark next to their names.
The administrator configures what fields will be part of the create dialog, but as a
user, you can customize and make your own create screen by hiding the optional
fields, by performing the following steps:
1. Click on the Configure Fields option at the top-right corner.
2. Select the Custom option.

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3. Uncheck all the fields you want to hide, and check the fields that you want
to show.

You are only hiding or showing these fields for yourself.

Only the JIRA administrator can actually hide and show
fields globally for all users.

There is a Create another option beside the Create button. By ticking this option
and then clicking on the Create button, the Create Issue dialog box will stay on
the screen and remember the values you have previously entered, such as priority,
components, and due dates. This way, you can avoid having to fill in the whole
dialog box again and will only have to update some of the fields that actually are
different, such as Summary. With this feature, you can rapidly create many issues in
a much shorter time frame.

Editing an issue
There are two ways in which you can edit an issue in JIRA. The first and more
traditional way is by clicking the Edit button or pressing E on your keyboard. This
will bring up the Edit Issue dialog with all the editable fields for the current issue.
This allows you to make changes to multiple fields at once.

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The second option is called in-line editing. With this feature, you will be able to
view the issue and edit the field you want on the spot, without having to wait for the
edit dialog to load. Scroll down to find the field. To edit a field in-line, all you have to
do is hover your mouse over the value for the field you want to update, wait for the
Edit icon to show up, click the icon, and start editing.

Deleting an issue
You can delete issues from JIRA. You might need to delete issues that have been
created by mistake or if the issue is redundant, although normally, it is better to
close and mark the issue as a duplicate. We will discuss closing an issue in Chapter 6,
Workflows and Business Processes.
Issue deletion is permanent in JIRA. Unlike some other
applications that may put deleted records in a trash bin, which
you can retrieve later, JIRA completely deletes the issue from
the system. The only way to retrieve the deleted issue is by
restoring JIRA with a previous backup.

Perform the following steps to delete an issue:

1. Browse to the issue you wish to delete.

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2. Click on the Delete option from the More menu. This will bring up the
Delete Issue dialog box.
3. Click on the Delete button to remove the issue permanently from JIRA.
Deleting an issue permanently removes it from JIRA, along with all of its data
including attachments and comments.

Moving an issue between projects

Once an issue has been created, the issue is associated with a project. You can,
however, move the issue around from one project to another. This may sound like a
very simple process, but there are many steps involved and things to be considered.
First, you need to decide on a new issue type for the issue, if the current issue type
does not exist in the new project. Second, you will need to map a status of the issue.
Third, you will need to decide on the values for the fields that exist in the new project
but which do not exist in the current project if those fields are set to mandatory in the
new project. Sounds like a lot? Luckily, JIRA comes with a wizard that is designed to
help you address all those items.
Perform the following steps to start moving an issue:
1. Browse to the issue you wish to move.
2. Click on the Move option in the More menu. This will bring up the
Move Issue wizard.
There are essentially four steps in the Move Issue wizard.
The first step is to select which project you wish to move the issue to. You will also
need to select the new issue type. If the same issue type exists in the new project, you
can usually continue to use the same issue type.

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The second step allows you to map the current issue to the new project's workflow.
If the issue's status exists in the target project, the wizard will skip this step.

The third step shows all the fields that exist in the new project but not the current
project and which require a value. Again, if there are no missing fields, this step will
be skipped.

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Issue Management

The fourth and last step shows you the summary of the changes that will be applied,
by moving the issue from project A to project B. This is your last chance to make sure
that all the information is correct. If there are any mistakes, you can go back to step
one and start over again. If you are happy with the changes, confirm the move by
clicking on Move.

Once the issue is moved, it will be given a new issue key based on the new project.
However, JIRA is still able to redirect you if you access the issue with its old issue key.

Casting a vote on an issue

The most straightforward way to express your interest in a JIRA issue is to vote for it.
For organizations or teams that manage their priorities based on popularity, voting
is a great mechanism to collect this information. The Popular Issues project tab
mentioned in Chapter 2, Project Management will display all the voted issues.
An example of this is how Atlassian uses JIRA (for example, https://jira.
atlassian.com/browse/JRA-9) as a way to let its customers choose and vote for the

features they want to be implemented or bugs to be fixed, by voting on issues based

on their needs. This allows the product management and marketing team to have an
insight on the market needs and how to best evolve their offerings.
One thing to keep in mind is when voting, you can only vote ONCE per issue. You
can vote many times for many different issues, but for any given issue, you have
only one vote. This helps prevent a single user from continuously voting on the
same issue, which may blow the final statistics out of proportion. You can, however,
unvote a vote you have already cast on an issue, and vote for it again later; if you
choose to do this, it will still only count as one vote.
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To vote for an issue, simply click on the Vote for this issue link next to Votes. When
you have voted for an issue, the icon will appear as colored. When you have not yet
voted for an issue, the icon will appear gray. Note that you cannot vote for issues
you have created.

Receiving notifications on an issue

JIRA is able to send automated e-mail notifications about updates on issues to
users. Normally, notification e-mails will only be sent out to the issue's reporter,
assignee, and people who have registered interest in the issue. This behavior can
be changed through Notification Schemes, which we will discuss in Chapter 7,
E-mails and Notifications.
You can register your interest in the issue by choosing to watch the issue. By
watching an issue, you will receive e-mail notifications on activity updates. Users
watching the issue can also choose to stop watching, thus stop receiving e-mail
updates from JIRA. You can also add other users as watchers by adding them to the
watcher's list.
To watch an issue, simply click on the Start watching this issue link. When you are
already watching the issue, the text will be Stop watching this issue. If you click on
the link again, you will stop watching the issue, as shown in the following screenshot:

JIRA will automatically add you as a watcher for issues

created by you.

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JIRA also shows how many people are actively watching the issue by displaying the
total watchers next to the watch icon. You can click on the number next to Watchers
to see the full list of watchers.

Assigning issues to users

Once an issue has been created, the user normally assigned to the issue will start
working on it. Afterwards, the user can assign the issue further, for example, to QA
staff for further verification.
There are many instances where an issue needs to be reassigned to a different user.
For example, the current assignee may be unavailable, or if issues are created with
no specific assignees. Another example will be that issues are assigned to different
people at different stages of the workflow. For this reason, JIRA allows users to
reassign issues once they have been created.
Perform the following steps to assign an issue:
1. Browse to the issue you wish to assign.
2. Click on the Assign button in the Issue menu bar or press A on your
keyboard (you can also use the in-line edit feature here). This will bring up
the Assign dialog.
3. Select the new assignee for the issue, and optionally add a comment to
provide some information to the new assignee.
4. Click on the Assign button.

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Once this issue has been reassigned, its assignee value will be updated to the new
user. The new assignee will also receive a notification e-mail, alerting him/her of
the assignment. You can also un-assign an issue this way by simply selecting the
Unassigned option. Unassigned issues do not have an assignee and will not show up
on anyone's list of active issues.
You can press I on your keyboard to quickly assign the
issue to yourself.

Sharing issues with other users

If you want to e-mail an issue to other users in JIRA, instead of having to manually
copy and paste the issue's URL in an e-mail, you can use the built-in share feature in
JIRA. All you have to do is go to the issue you want to share, click on the share icon
or press S on your keyboard as shown in the following screenshot. Then select the
users you want to share the issue with and click the Share button.

If the user you are sharing the issue with does not have access
to the issue, he/she will not be able to see the issue's details.
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Issue linking
JIRA allows you to create custom hyper-links for issues. This allows you to provide
more information to the issue. For example, for a support-type issue, you can link it
to a web page that contains information on how to resolve similar types of problems.
Another example will be to link the issue to other related issues.

Enabling issue linking

Issue linking is enabled by default when you first install JIRA. Issue linking is
configured globally, so once it is enabled, it will become available for all projects
in JIRA.
If issue linking is disabled, you can enable it by the following steps to enable issue
linking. Note that you need to be a JIRA administrator:
1. Log in as a JIRA administrator user.
2. Browse to the JIRA administration console.
3. Select the System tab and then the Issue Linking option. This will take you
to the Issue Link Administration page.
4. Click on Activate to enable issue linking in JIRA.
From this page, you will be able to see a list of Link Types available. A link type
defines the nature of the link between issues. As shown in the screenshot in the next
section, the default Blocks link type defines that issue A blocks issue B. This means
that issue B cannot be completed until issue A is resolved. It is important to note that
issue linking does not place any restrictions on issues. So in our example, although
the link states that issue B cannot be completed until issue A is done, this is not
enforced and users can close issue A while issue B remains open.
All the link types shown here are for standard issue links. There are no remote
issue link types. However, you do need to enable issue linking to make use of
remote issue links.

Creating link types

JIRA comes with four link types by default: Blocks, Clones, Duplicate, and Relates.
As we have discussed earlier, a link type is simply a type of association or a label on
the association, which describes the relationships between two issues. Therefore, you
can define your own link types in JIRA. For example, one issue can support another
issue, and we can create a link type called Supports.

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Perform the following steps to create a new link type:

1. Browse to the Issue Linking Administration page.
2. Make sure issue linking is enabled.
3. Fill in the Add New Link Type form. Do the following for the Support
link type:
1. Enter Supports for the Name field.
2. Enter supports for the Outward Link Description field.
3. Enter is supported by for the Inward Link Description field.
4. Click on the Add button.
Outward and inward link descriptions define what is shown when users select the
type of link to use when linking two issues together. We will see an example of this
in a later section. Once a new link type is added, it will be displayed in the table on
the Issue Linking Administration page.

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Linking issues with other issues

Issues are often related to other issues in some way. For example, issue A might be
blocking issue B, or issue C might be a duplicate of issue D. You can add descriptions
to the issue to capture this information, or delete one of the issues in the duplication
case, but with this approach, it is hard to keep a track of all these relationships. Luckily,
JIRA provides an elegant solution for this, with the standard issue link feature.
The standard issue link lets you link an issue with one or more other issues in the
same JIRA instance. So, you can link two issues from different projects together
(if you have access to both the projects). Linking issues in this way is very simple;
all you need to know is the target issues to link to:
1. Browse to the View Issue page for the issue you wish to create a link for.
2. Select Link from the More Actions menu. This will bring up the Link Issue
dialog box.
3. Select the JIRA Issue option from the left panel.
4. Select the type of issue linking.
5. Select the issues to link to. You can use the search facility to help you locate
the issues you want.
6. Click on the Link button.

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After you have linked your issues, they will be displayed in the Issue Links section
on the View Issue page. JIRA will display the target issue's key, description, priority,
and status.

Linking issues with remote contents

The standard JIRA issue link allows you to link multiple issues in the same JIRA
instance. JIRA also lets you link issues to resources such as a web page on the
Internet.
Using remote issue links is very similar to the standard issue link; the difference is that
instead of selecting another issue, the URL address of the target resource is specified:
1. Open up the Link Issue dialog box.
2. Select the Web Link option from the left panel.
3. Specify the URL address for the target resource. JIRA will automatically try
to find and load the appropriate icon for the resource.
4. Provide the name for the link in Link Text field. The name you provide here
will be what is shown for the link when viewing the issue.
5. Click on the Link button.

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Issue cloning
When you need to create a new issue and you already have a baseline issue, JIRA
allows you to quickly create it with the data based on your existing issues, by cloning
the original one. Cloning an issue allows you to quickly create a new one with most
of its fields populated. For example, you might have two software products with the
same bug. After creating a bug report in one project, you can simply clone it for the
other project.
A cloned issue will have all the fields copied from the original issue; however, it is
a separate entity nonetheless. Further actions performed on either of the two issues
will not affect the other.
When an issue is being cloned, a Clone link is automatically created between the two
issues, establishing a relationship.
Cloning an issue in JIRA is simple and straightforward. All you have to do is specify
a new summary (or accept the default summary with CLONEtext at the front) for
the cloned issue:
1. Browse to the issue you wish to clone.
2. Select Clone from the More Actions menu. This will bring up the
Clone Issue page.
3. Type in a new summary for the new cloned issue.
4. Check the Clone Attachments checkbox if you also want to copy over all
the attachments.
5. Click on the Create button.
Once the issue is successfully cloned, you will be taken to the issue summary page
for the newly cloned issue.

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Time tracking
Since issues often represent a single unit of work that can be worked on, it is logical for
users to log the time they have spent working on it. You can specify an estimated effort
required to complete an issue, and JIRA will be able to help you track the progress.
JIRA displays the time tracking information of an issue in the Time Tracking panel at
the right-hand side, as shown in the following screenshot with its description:

Estimated: This represents the original estimated effort required to complete

the issue. For example, the estimated time required for fixing a bug by
a developer.

Remaining: This represents the remaining time for the issue to be completed.
It is calculated automatically by JIRA based on the original estimate and
total time logged by users. However, the user logging work on the issue,
as described in the following section, can also override this value.

Logged: This represents the total time spent on the issue so far.

Configuring time tracking

Time tracking is enabled by default when you install JIRA. To change your time
tracking settings, you will first need to deactivate it, and then activate it again with
the new settings:
1. Log in as a JIRA administrator user.
2. Browse to the JIRA administration console.
3. Select the System tab, and then select the Time Tracking option. This will
take you to the Time Tracking page.
4. Click on the Deactivate button.
5. Configure the time tracking parameters.

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6. Click on Activate to enable time tracking in JIRA.

You can set several parameters on the Time Tracking page. As we will see in later
sections, these parameters will determine the time tracking behavior for JIRA, as
shown in the following table:
Parameter

Description

Hours per day

This is the number of working hours per day in JIRA. For example,
if this is set to 8 hours per day, when the user puts in 16 hours, JIRA
will automatically convert it to 2 days.

Days per week

This is the number of working days per week in JIRA. For example,
if this is set to 5 days per week, when the user puts in 10 days, JIRA
will automatically convert it to 2 weeks.

Time format

This is the format in which JIRA will display time in the Time
Spent field.

Default Unit

This is the default time tracking unit if the user does not supply one.

Legacy Mode

This will make JIRA use the old time tracking behavior.

Copy Comment To
Work Description

This is a very handy feature, where JIRA will automatically copy

comments made during a workflow transition (workflow will be
discussed in Chapter 6, Workflows and Business Processes) that allows
time logging.

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Specifying original estimates

Original estimate represents the anticipated time required to complete the
work represented by the issue. It is shown as the blue bar under the Time
Tracking section.
In order for you to specify an original estimate value, you need to make sure that
time tracking is enabled and the Time Tracking field is added to the issue's create
and/or edit screen. We will discuss fields and screens in Chapter 4, Field Management
and Chapter 5, Screen Management, respectively.
To specify an original estimate value, provide a value for the Original Estimate field
on the create issue and/or edit issue screen.

Logging work
Logging work in JIRA allows you to specify the amount of time (work) you have
spent working on an issue. You can log work against any of the issues, provided
that Time Tracking is enabled and you have the permission to do so. We will cover
permissions in Chapter 9, Searching, Reporting, and Analysis.
Perform the following steps to log work against an issue:
1. Browse to the issue you wish to log work against.
2. Select Log Work from the More Actions menu. This will bring up the Log
Work page.
3. Enter the amount of time you wish to log. Use w, d, h, and m to specify week,
day, hour, and minute, respectively.
4. Select the date you wish to log your work against.
5. Optionally, select how the remaining estimate should be adjusted.
6. Add a description to the work you have done.
7. Optionally, select who can view the work log entry.

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8. Click on the Log button.

When you log work on an issue, you have the option to choose how the Remaining
Estimate value will be affected. By default, this value will be automatically
calculated by subtracting the amount logged from the original estimate. You can,
however, choose other options available, such as setting the remaining estimate to a
specific value or reducing it by an amount that is different from the amount of work
being logged.
You can also click on the + sign in the Time Tracking
section to log time.

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Issues and comments

JIRA lets users create comments on issues. As we have already seen, you will be
able to create comments when assigning an issue to a different user. This is a very
useful feature that allows multiple users to collaborate to work on the same issue and
share information. For example, the support staff (issue assignee) may request more
clarification from the business user (issue reporter) by adding a comment to the issue.
When combined with JIRA's built-in notification system, automatic e-mail notifications
will be sent to the issue's reporter, assignee, and any of the other users watching the
issue. Notifications will be covered in Chapter 7, E-mails and Notifications.

Adding comments
By default, all logged-in users will be able to add comments to issues they can access.
Perform the following steps to add a comment to an issue:
1. Browse to the issue you wish to add a comment to.
2. Click on the Comment option in the Issue menu bar or press M on your
keyboard. This will bring up the Comment input section.
3. Type a comment into the text box. The text box will adjust its size as
you type.
4. Click on the Add button to add the comment.

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Once a comment has been added, the comment will be visible in the Comments tab
in the Activity section. When you are creating comments, you can select who can
view your comment using the comment access control. This is very useful if you
have external users viewing the issue and you only want to share your comments
with internal users.

Managing your comments

After you have added your comment to an issue, you can edit its contents and
security settings or delete it altogether. To edit or delete a comment, simply hover
over the comment, and the comment management option will appear to the
right-hand side.

Permalinking a comment
From time to time, you will want to refer other people to a comment you made
previously. While you can tell them the issue and let them scroll down to the bottom
until they find your comment amongst hundreds of others, JIRA allows you to create
a quick permalink to your comment that will take you directly to the comment
of interest.
Perform the following steps to create a permalink for a comment:
1. Browse to the comment you wish to permalink.
2. Hover over the comment to bring up the comment management options.
3. Click on the permalink icon. This will highlight the comment in pale blue.

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You will now notice that your browser's URL bar will look something similar
to http://sample.jira.com/browse/DEMO-1?focusedCommentId=10100
&page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:commenttabpanel#comment-10100 as a sample link (notice the focusedCommendId section

after the issue key). Copy and paste that URL and give it to your colleagues; once
they click on this link, they will be taken directly to the highlighted comment.

Attachments
As we have seen so far, JIRA uses fields such as summary and description to capture
data. This works for most cases, but when you have complex data such as application
log files or screenshots, fields become insufficient. This is where attachments come
in. JIRA allows you to attach files to issues as support documents.

Enabling attachments in JIRA

Attachments are saved as files on the JIRA file server and not in the database, so
you need to ensure that there is sufficient disk space to accommodate the volume
of attachments for now and future growth. As attachments are not stored in the
database, JIRA will not backup the files as a part of its backup process. Attachments
need to be backed up separately.
Attachments are enabled by default in JIRA, so users will be able to attach files to
issues as soon as JIRA is installed. However, if it is disabled for some reason, you can
re-enable it. Perform the following steps to enable attachments for JIRA:
1. Log in to JIRA as a JIRA administrator.
2. Browse to the JIRA administration console.
3. Select the System tab and then the Attachments option. This will take you to
the Attachment Settings page.
4. Click on the Edit Settings button. This will bring up the Edit Attachment
Settings page.
5. Select Use Default Directory for the Attachment Path option.
6. Click on the Update button to enable attachments in JIRA.

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On the Attachment Settings page, as shown in the following screenshot, there are
a few options that you will need to configure while enabling attachments in JIRA:

The following table summarizes the configuration options:

Options

Description

Attachment Path

This specifies the location where attachments will be stored on

the filesystem. The only options are the default directory, which is
inside your JIRA_HOME directory, or disabled attachments in JIRA.

Attachment Size

This specifies the maximum size of the attachment that users can
upload. Default is 10 MB.

Enable Thumbnails

This specifies whether or not to enable thumbnail generation when

the attachment is an image.

Enable ZIP support

This specifies whether or not to enable ZIP support, which allows

users to download multiple attachments as a single ZIP file, and
also view the contents of the ZIP attachment files.

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Attachments are enabled and disabled globally across JIRA. You cannot selectively
enable or disable attachment functions on a per project basis. You can, however,
achieve a similar result by controlling the permission around who can attach files.
Permissions are discussed in Chapter 8, Securing JIRA.

Attaching files
JIRA allows you to attach any arbitrary file to issues. These can be image files,
Microsoft Office documents, and other binary files. Perform the following steps to
attach a file to an issue:
1. Browse to the issue you wish to attach a file.
2. Select Attach File from the More menu. This will bring up the Attach
Files dialog.
3. Click on the Browse button to select the file you wish to attach. You can
repeat this step to attach more than one file.
4. Optionally, provide a comment for the attached file. The comment will be
added as a normal comment to the issue.
5. Click on the Attach button.

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Attaching screenshots
Apart from letting you attach any file to an issue, JIRA also allows you to directly
attach a screenshot from your system clipboard to issues. This saves you from having
to take a screenshot, save it as a physical file on the disk, and finally attach it to JIRA.
Perform the following steps to attach a screenshot:
1. Take a screenshot with your operating system. For example, if you are on
Windows, press the Print Screen key.
2. Browse to the issue you wish to attach a screenshot.
3. Select Attach screenshot from the More menu. This will bring up the
Attach screenshot dialog.
4. Press the Ctrl + V keys on your keyboard, and the screenshot will be pasted
into the panel above.
5. Enter a filename for the screenshot or accept the default name.
6. Click on the Upload button.

Issue types and subtasks

As seen earlier, issues in JIRA can represent many things ranging from software
development tasks to project management milestones. Issue type is what
differentiates one kind of issue from another.
Each issue has a type (therefore, the name issue type), which is represented by
the issue type field. This lets you know what type of issue it is, and also helps you
determine many other aspects of it, such as what fields will be displayed for this issue.
JIRA comes with a set of default issue types, as shown in the following table:
Issue type

Description

Bug

A problem that impairs or prevents the functions

of the product

Improvement

An enhancement to an existing feature

New feature

A new feature of the product

Task

A task that needs to be done

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The default issue types are great for simple software development projects, but they
do not necessarily meet the needs of others. Since it is impossible to create a system
that can address everyone's needs, JIRA lets you create your own issue types and
assigns them to projects. For example, for a help desk project, you might want to
create a custom issue type called ticket. You can create this custom issue type and
assign it to the Help Desk project, and users will be able to log tickets, instead of
bugs in the system.
Issue types are managed through the Manage Issue Types page. Perform the
following steps to access this page:
1. Log in to JIRA as a JIRA administrator.
2. Browse to the JIRA administration console.
3. Select the Issues tab and then the Issue Types option. This will take you to
the Issue Types Administration page.

The preceding screenshot shows a list of default issue types along with custom issue
types created by the administrator.

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Creating issue types

You can create any number of issue types. Perform the following steps to create a
new issue type:
1. Browse to the Manage Issue Types page.
2. Click on the Add Issue Type button.
3. Type a unique name for the new issue type.
4. Type in a general description for the issue type.
5. Select whether the new issue type will be a standard issue type or a subtask
issue type.
6. Click on Add to create the new issue type.
Once the new issue type is created, it will be assigned a default icon. If you want to
change the icon, you will need to click on the Edit link for the issue type, and then
select a new image as its icon.

Deleting issue types

When deleting an issue type, you have to keep in mind that the issue type might
already be in use; meaning there are issues created with that issue type. So, if you
delete an issue type, you will need to select a new one for those issues. The good
news is that JIRA takes care of this for you. As shown in the following screenshot,
we delete the Bug issue type and JIRA informs us of the already existing 19 issues of
type Bug. You will need to assign them to a new issue type, such as Improvement.

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Perform the following steps to delete an existing issue type:

1. Browse to the Manage Issue Types page.
2. Click on the Delete link for the issue type you wish to delete. This will bring
up the Delete Issue Type page. If there are existing issues with the issue type
you are trying to delete, you will be asked to select a new issue type.
3. Select the new issue type for the existing issues. Once deleted, those issues
will be automatically updated to the new issue type.
4. Click on the Delete button to delete the issue type.

Subtasks
JIRA allows only one person (assignee) to work on one issue at a time. This design
ensures that an issue is a single unit of work that can be tracked against one person.
However, in the real world, we often find ourselves in situations where we need
to have multiple people working on the same issue. This may be caused by a poor
breakdown of tasks or simply because of the nature of the task at hand. Whatever the
reason, JIRA provides a mechanism to address this problem through subtasks.
Subtasks are similar to issues in many ways, and as a matter of fact, they are
a special kind of issue. They must have a parent issue, and their issue types are
flagged as subtask issue types. You can say that all subtasks are issues, but not
all issues are subtasks.
For every issue, you can have one or more subtasks that can be assigned and tracked
separately from another. Subtasks cannot have other subtasks. JIRA allows only one
level of subtasks.

Enabling subtasks
Subtasks are enabled by default. If you have subtasks disabled for some reason, you
will need to enable this feature.
Perform the following steps to enable subtasks in JIRA:
1. Browse to the JIRA administration console.
2. Select the Issues tab and then the Sub-Tasks option. This will take you to the
Sub-Tasks Administration page.
3. Click on Enable to enable subtasks in JIRA.

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Creating subtasks
Since subtasks belong to an issue, you need to browse to the issue first before you
can create a new subtask:
1. Browse to the issue you wish to create subtasks for.
2. Select Create Sub-Task from the More Actions menu.
You will see a familiar Create Issue dialog box. However, one thing you will notice is
that, unlike when you are creating an issue, you do not select which project to create
the subtask in. This is because JIRA can determine the project value based on the
parent issue. You will also notice that you can only select issue types that are subtasks.
Other than these differences, creating a subtask is no different than creating a normal
issue. You can customize the fields shown in the dialog box and choose to rapidly
create multiple subtasks by selecting the Create another option.
Once the subtask has been created, it will be added to the Sub-Tasks section of the
parent issue. You will see all the subtasks that belong to the issue and their status. If
a subtask has been completed, it will have a green tick next to it.

Issue type schemes

Issue type schemes are templates or collections of issue types that can be applied
to projects. As shown in the following screenshot, JIRA comes with Default Issue
Type Scheme, which is applied to all projects that do not have specific issue type
schemes applied.

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When a new issue type is created in JIRA, it is added to Default Issue Type Scheme.
This means that the new issue type will be available to all the projects by default.
This will become a problem when you start to have specialized projects such as help
desk, and issue types such as Bug become inappropriate.

To overcome this problem, JIRA lets us group a collection of issue types together.
We can also rearrange the order of the issue types within the collection so that they
appear in the drop-down list in a logical manner to the users. In effect, we create an
issue type scheme, a template for issue types, and their order, which can be reused
and applied to one or more projects.
We will create a new issue type scheme for our example of JIRA implementation
later in this chapter.

Creating issue type schemes

Perform the following steps to create a new issue type scheme:
1. Browse to the administration console.
2. Select the Issues tab and then the Issue Type Schemes option. This will bring
you to the Issue Type Schemes page.
3. Click on the Add Issue Type Scheme button.
4. Provide a name for the new issue type scheme in Scheme Name.
5. Drag the issue types you want to be part of the scheme from the Available
Issue Types list and drop them into the Issue Types for Current Scheme list.

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6. Select a Default Issue Type value. Note that this is optional, and you can
only select a default issue type after you have selected at least one issue
type for the new scheme.
7. Click on the Save button.

After the issue type scheme has been created, you will need to associate it with the
projects you want to apply the scheme to. The simplest way to do this is to click on the
Associate link for the issue type scheme, and then select the projects you want. This
allows you to apply the scheme to multiple projects at once. If there are already issues
of issue type that does not belong to the new issue type scheme, JIRA will prompt you
and walk you through to change the issue type value for all the affected issues.

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Issue priorities
Priorities help users to set the importance of issues. Users can first assign priority
values to issues and later use it to sort the list of issues they have to work on. Thus,
helping the team decide which issues to focus on first. JIRA comes with five levels
of priorities out of the box, as shown in the following screenshot:

You can customize this list by creating your own priorities. To create new priorities,
follow these steps:
1. Browse to the administration console.
2. Select the Issues tab and then the Priorities option.
3. Specify the name of the new priority.
4. Click the select image link to choose an icon for the priority.

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5. Specify a color for the priority. You can either type in HTML color hex code
directly or use the color picker to help you select the color you want. The color
chosen here will be used when icon images cannot be displayed, such as when
you export issues to a spreadsheet.
6. Click on the Add button.
Priorities are global. This means that all projects will share
the same set of priorities.

The help desk project

In this exercise, we will continue our setup for the project we have created in the
previous chapter. We will add the following configurations to our project:

A set of new issue types that are specific to our help desk project

A new scheme to limit the selection of issue types

Adding new issue types

Since our project is for a help desk support team, the default issue types that come
with JIRA are not appropriate for this purpose. For this reason, let's create our own
issue types and associate them with the project. For this exercise, we will create two
new issue types, incident and ticket.
The first step to set up an issue type association is to create the two issue types we
need, incident and ticket:
1. Browse to the Issue Types page.
2. Click on the Add Issue Type button.
3. Type in Incident for the Name field.
4. Click on Add to create the new Incident issue type.
You should now see the new Incident issue type in the table. Now, let's add the
Ticket issue type:
1. Type in Ticket for the Name field.
2. Click on Add to create the new Ticket issue type.

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You should see both the Incident and Ticket issue types. However, this will only
make our new issue types available, but will not make them the only options when
creating a new issue for our project. Default issue types, such as Bug and New Feature,
which are not applicable for a help desk, are still available. By leaving them there, we
are running the risk of confusing the users and allowing mistakes to be made.
If you remember from previous discussions, we can address this problem with a new
issue type scheme. Let's go ahead and create one.

Creating an issue type scheme

We want to limit the issue types to be only Incident and Ticket for our Global
Help Desk project, but we do not want to affect the other projects that still need
to have Bug and other default issue types. So, we need to create a new issue type
scheme specifically for support projects, which can be used by us and other teams:
1. Browse to the Issue Type Schemes page.
2. Click on the Add Issue Type Scheme button.
3. Name our new issue type scheme Support Desk Issue Type Scheme.
4. Drag the Incident and Ticket issue types from the Available Issue Types
panel to the Issue Types for Current Scheme panel.
5. Select Incident as the Default Issue Type value.
6. Click on the Save button.
With the issue type scheme in place, the last step is to apply it to our Support
Desk project:
1. Click on the Associate link for the Help Desk Issue Type Scheme option.
2. Select your Global Help Desk project.
3. Click on the Associate button to apply this issue type scheme to the project.
If you have issues in the Global Helpdesk project with issue types that do not exist
in our new issue type scheme, follow the issue type change wizard and change those
issues to either Incident or Ticket.

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Putting it together
With everything created and set up, you can go back and create a new issue to see
how it all looks. If everything works out, you should see something similar to the
following screenshot:

As you can see, Incident and Ticket are the only issue types that can be selected
when creating a new issue for the Global Help Desk project.

Summary
In this chapter, we looked at what issues are in JIRA and explored the basic
operations of creating, editing, and deleting issues. We also looked at the advanced
operations offered by JIRA to enhance how you can manipulate and use issues, such
as adding attachments, creating subtasks, linking multiple issues, and so on.
In the next chapter, we will look at fields and what we can do with them.
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Get more information JIRA Essentials Third Edition

Where to buy this book

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