View work by customer, while scheduling work by Project

Question

Hello Everyone,

I want to allow people to view work either by A) Project (which in may case each project is a core capability like Software or Hardware) or B)  all issues for a specific customer regardless of what Project they are in.

That sounds like a reasonably common way people would like to see information, but it has this nasty side effect. If I make a "Customer A" board using a saved filter, then that board can always make it's own sprints. I don't want people to be able to make customer specific sprints.

So this leads me to believe I am using Jira wrong. How can I do both

* Have one sprint per Project where all work is scheduled
* Have some view where I can see all work for a Customer across all projects

Andy Heinzer · Answer

Hi Andrew,

I don't think you're using Jira wrong.  Jira is such an extensible product that it can be made to fit many roles and needs.  I think that's why it is as popular as it is. But I think I understand your desire here to both be able to see customer specific issues as well as control who creates sprints and where.

Sprints though are not bound only one project.  They are designed to be able to take in issues from a board, which can be setup to use a JQL filter to bring issues in.  That sprint can exist across multiple boards and projects.   Whether or not a sprint appear on a board is determine by either A) the sprint was created on that board and/or B)  if the JQL filter that board is using can return at least 1 issue that current exists in that sprint.  If it does, that sprint will appear on the board.  If not, then that sprint does not appear here.

Even if the sprint appears over on another board, that sprint will only show issues that match that board filter when viewed on that board.  There is more on this in the KB Sprints shared between multiple boards.

With this in mind, I think there is an approach you could use to try to meet both of your listed requirements.  You could

* create a new project,
* in that project create at least 1 unique issue for each unique reporter that you might want to create a board for of just their issues,
* then change the permission scheme on that new project so that only you have the Manage Sprints permission.   Or perhaps no one has manage sprint permission in that project.

Doing this would mean that only you would be able to create sprints on a board that is using a filter such as

reporter=jsmith

Because that filter will bring in all issues across all projects where that user is the reporter, including your new project just as long as all your other users can at least browse this issue.  So when you create a custom permission scheme be sure that your account has manage sprint permission, and your other users have the browse permission.

When a board has issues in it from across more than one project, in order to create a sprint on that board the user needs to have the manage sprint permission in all those projects.   This kind of use case I think is covered in the KB Using Manage Sprints permission for advanced cases.

The downside is that each board of user issues will have this extra placeholder issue created in the new project, but it could prevent users from creating sprints on those boards.

Maybe this will help.   If this approach seems inadequate, or overly complex, then I still feel like you are going to need to be more restrictive in regards to which users have the manage sprint permissions in at least one of the projects where these users create issues to meet your listed requirements.  By default, Jira permissions schemes tend to give this to any-logged-in-user role.  Which is probably too broad for your use case here.

I hope this helps.

Andy