JIRA to track faults with our equipment, resolution, reporting?

Rob Davis2

Is JIRA suited to tracking the state of equipment, i.e. if it is working, faulty, being repaired and to produce reports and trends on that?

Please share your experiences.

We were thinking of using an Excel spreadsheet but I would think that with JIRA we get a lot of the management and reporting of the data ‘for free’: we don’t need to concern ourselves with checking out the latest version of the spreadsheet, who’s got it out for edit etc etc.

And with JIRA, should it be suitable, we can all simultaneously update on specific equipment individually without holding up others who want to edit details of their equipment.

Moreover, with the ubiquity of the web browser (no additional apps to install) Web-based databases like JIRA have benefits over generic spreadsheets because with the web, the interface is more ‘guided’ – i.e. you are guided as where to enter data and the built-in navigation orientates you.

Dieter

Definitely whenever you want to track the status of an entity (be it real world like a device or something abstract like a requirement or a bug) JIRA is a good candidate to enter the play.

Besides what you mentionned I like to get automated reminders from subscriptions, e.g. for overdue issues or weekly reports ai have to do. Excel can't do that for you, it's passive until you open it. Using customized mail templates you can automatically provide reports for managers as soon as critical actions have been taken, e.g. when an expensive equipment breaks.

The problems you will probably face with JIRA is to get acceptance for the user interface by end users (not developers). But since there is SpeakEasy you can also better customize the UI for more unexperienced users and hide away a lot of all the bells and whistles in JIRA.