How I Use Structure for Jira

[jkimttv]

I wanted to share my experiences with ALM’s Jira plug-in called Structure for Jira (https://almworks.com/structure/overview.html). I find this to be an extremely useful tool when managing my projects and tickets in Jira.

Organizing Using Automations

One of the challenges of using Jira’s Backlog and Board views is that while it allows for custom filters via Quick Filters, there is no way to view different sorted views. Structure enables me to create multiple views by creating multiple boards. The view that I show below of projects organizes and sorts them by Due Date. This is done by dynamically using an Automation that inserts issues into each section based on my JQL criteria as well as sorting by the JQL.

Another view that I find extremely helpful is organizing all IInitiatives, with dynamically generated views of contained Epics and Stories. This is done by using the “Add issues linked by…” and “Add issues belonging to epics” Automations. See below:

WYSIWIG Capabilities

A very convenient feature that Structure enables is the WYSIWYG capability to modify fields within Jira tickets right from the Structure view. This makes it really easy to view a group of tickets at a glance, whether it’s a project view or any other type of group that one wants to see and modify fields quickly inline, without having to change screen contexts. 

Rough Drafts, Quick and Easy

If you haven’t formulized an approach to how you want to organize your work, you can always use the drag-and-drop features. This is a nice way to get your tickets onto a board and organize them in an ad hoc manner, using folders parent tickets and even with a mix of Automations (Automations can be placed within lower levels so that only nested tickets are affected by them) so that you have organize a single board in several different ways. I highly recommend using Structures to create views that will be sure to enhance your effectiveness in staying informed as to the state of your projects and work items.

[jkimttv]

One thing (since I use both Structure for Jira Server and Structure for Jira Cloud) that you'll notice if you use the Cloud version is that you might really miss the powerful capability to (see this page for more - https://wiki.almworks.com/display/strcloud/Comparison+to+Structure+for+Jira+Server%2C+Data+Center+and+Service+Desk):

• Generators do not support manual reordering - it is currently not possible to rearrange generated content or change field values by dragging issues from one generated group to another

This is something that I look forward to when the ALM team brings this feature up to parity. It speeds up project management workflow and provides a visual tool that enables a level of organizing relationships between tickets within Jira that is just not possible outside of this tool. 

[Sudarshan]

Structures in Jira is very useful, specially for projects which are within an ecosystem, and situations where one has to manage and see everything...

Remember over the past we have always tried to bring that perfect symphony of project/s delivery.
Structures help in a better visualization and management, its simple and no coding.!

[jkimttv]

Completely agree. The simplicity enables anyone to jump in and get a useful view up. But the tooling allows you to go much farther and create a great number of customized views. 

[Suriya Kumar Sivasubramania]

can you give me the pricing information for Structure?

[SH]

We have structure, but we have not found it usable.  Firstly, when we create a new structure, we get the error "One or more Insert generators hit the insertion limit".  Secondly, it doesnt show structure (initiatives/ epics/ stories/ subtasks) etc, it just shows  flat one dimensional list of something which looks like userIds (e. "JIRAUSER123", but they are nothing we have seen previously.  We have tried all the view types (tracking, planning, basic view etc) but they are all the same - a flat list of users with a drill down for tasks assigned to that user.

Clicking on the magic wand "automation" button at the top also just gives a flat list of users, no structure.

I.e. completely useless.

[Damir Peric]

I would say you are not using it correctly than. For sure it is not useless. Flat list means no grouping was applied. Regarding insertion limit, more restrictive filtering needs to be done, and limit needs to be removed (usually it is 10000 items).

I recommend checking out some basic documentation on how to get started with Jira Structure.