26 Things I'd Love To Have In Jira

Save issue drafts - It's frustrating to write the same issue more then once, in case your computer shut down in the middle or your browser gets stuck. Would be awesome to have drafts saved.
Better Performance - Navigating between tabs more smoothly and opening issues much quicker is a must.
Portfolio - A way to truck all the projects in Jira with a progress bar that expends to an issue counter of the project, its estimation time, team members, etc. Should include a roadmap with all projects.
Slack Integration per user - No one uses mails anymore. Everyone wants to stop the Jira mails in my company and just receive slack notifications - each one with their own settings. There are apps for that in the marketplace but they don't use JQL or private channels.
Share next-gen projects with clients - Just as Slack has a way to let people that aren't from the company have a way to enter the company's workspace without having access to everything, so should Jira - That way we can share projects with clients and partners.
Improve Dashboard - The dashboard should include a personal To Do (with sections), an accordion gadgets that includes all projects and displays the issues that are assigned to the user in each one on click. Personal notification settings. Right now the only way to view all my issues in an organized and clear way is to create a kanban in a random project and have the filter set to all projects, and divide it to different swimlanes. Should be automatic for each person in the dashboard.
Management Overview - The management in every company needs to prioritize what tasks each division, team, and person should work on in a certain period of time. In order to do that they need a clear overview of all the tasks that are in the backlog from all projects. A backlog such as in the next gen project that contains all the backlogs of all projects would be a good view. And have issues that are in the board for a certain period of time (eg. a month) marked in some way to alert that tasks take to long to get done / prioritizing isn't done properly.
Team stuck-overflow integration - Question and answers inside company.
Get rid of confluence - To have an integration with google docs, a feedback area, discussions area, team members, etc, would be much better. Confluence is no where near docs and it takes to much effort to do very simple stuff. Google docs will always be more advance and comfortable.
Release notes feature based on all the closed issues that are related to commits deployed to a specific environment (within a certain time period)
General Setting - Renew the whole settings UI & UX. It doesn't need to be as complex as it is in the classic projects. It's hard to find certain things that are very basic (webhooks, users, etc). And most settings should be up to the user, not the administrator (notification settings, webhooks, etc).

Next Gen Project Improvements:

Opening an issue from the board should keep it in the board, instead of sending it to the backlog.
Need restrictions for closing sprints
Flags should appear on issue cards if added on board and show the feature flag
Show on card of issue if it has blockers (color / icon)
Set time for adding comments on issues (for example: Add comment tomorrow morning)
Add a checklist option in issues description (just like number & bullet lists)
Have 'Suggested Related Issues' for every issues (Can be in the same dropdown as 'History' / 'Comment', etc) - That way duplicates can be avoided. (Based on syntax).
Allow copy-pasting videos - like images.
Duplicate projects / settings - Be able to duplicate projects, or at least their settings - Most have very common settings, like issue types, and columns. Would save time.
Zeplin integration
Epics in road-maps should show how long it would take based on the estimations added to each issue under the epic summed up (considering weekends, and holidays based on location).
Have a mode that lets users add issues without opening the whole popup (like in Asana).
Save description templates - When testing a certain feature the'Steps to reproduce' description usually partially repeats itself. It would be nice to save 'templates' / auto-fill the description. For example: Testing a contact form plugin will include the following steps: Create a site > Add a contact for to site and continue with a specific flow. (Of course this is a very short version).
Adding an issue to an epic when opening it, instead of doing it separately after it's opened. (Like the issue link field in classic projects).
Backlog Filters - Add issue type filter to the backlog

2 comments

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Hi @Tal Levi,

Thanks for taking the time to publish this post. Love your ideas.

Let me have a go at answering you on the first 11 items,

1. Save issue drafts - while we don't have plans to introduce a draft state when creating a new issue, you will find that after you have created, we have upgraded the editor on the new issue page that does have a draft mode for content you create/edit in the description and comments boxes. You can try this out - if you navigate away or the browser happens to crash, you'll find that when you return to the issue the last edits will be there for you to continue working on, in effect saving your work in draft mode in the background for you automatically until you are ready to hit save and publish it to the issue.

Screen Shot 2019-01-16 at 11.00.36 am.png

2. Better Performance - this is an area we’re making progress. Over the past year we’ve made some gains with overall application performance improving by 25%. In particular, the issues page load time is now 40% faster. However, we still recognize that this isn’t enough so we’re still working very hard on improving performance for you. In the next few weeks you should expect to see us ship what we call a “single page app” experience where navigating around no longer triggers page reloads. Instead when you navigate around you'll see that Jira will no longer reload the navigation bar. It will only load the main viewing area which will make application performance feel smoother and snappier at the same time.

3. Portfolio - the new roadmaps features in next-gen will, in the longer term flex to cover views across projects. Watch this space!

4. Slack integration per user - We do have planned improvements to notifications. First you’ll see us do a better job batching notifications to reduce the noise and then move into more granular notification preferences. We released the Slack integration for Jira - are you using this app? https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1216863/jira-cloud-for-slack-official?hosting=cloud&tab=overview

5. Share next-gen projects with clients - This is something we’ve been looking in too. Again, watch this space!

6. Improve Dashboard - sounds like you’d like 2 things here - a better personal view into work, and also a view across projects. Would the latter be something similar to what you’re looking for with the point about 3. Portfolio?

7. Management view - the ability for next-gen projects to have a way to bring in data across multiple projects, as well as customise the layout of information is something we’ll be working on in the future so yes we are heading in that direction.

8. Team stuck-overflow integration - Stack-overflow for internal Q&A? Could you elaborate on how you’d imagine Jira would interact with those Q&As? eg. Would you expect to see related Q&As like in issue lines, or maybe embedded in comments where people reference a certain Q&A?

9. Get rid of confluence - That's not going to happen. A lot of our customers would be extremely upset if we did that. We find a lot of customers like the way that Confluence enables people to publish content and have it openly shared in the company to push and pull info into the right parts and rally the right people. Confluence also provides structure for organising the knowledge. However, if you do have a preference for Google Docs, we don't have a problem with that and are encouraging deeper connections there too. For example, you’ll notice that when you attach a file to a Jira issue, there is now the option to connect and pull things in from Google Drive. We’re very keen to have deeper connections with more apps you use.

Screen Shot 2019-01-16 at 1.04.17 pm.png

10. Release notes - we will very likely be bringing to next-gen something that did the job of “Release Hub” in classic projects - clarity on what is releasable / released with CI/CD integrations, but better. We'll consider this when we get round to that part of next-gen projects. Mostly what we're hearing from next-gen customers is that they want help to better manage completed work. As part of advancing agile practises, we are also looking for opportunities to connecting work represented in Jira issues to the intended outcomes your teams set out to deliver to customers - plotting releases over time and perhaps bringing in analytics data to measure impacts, that kind of thing.

11. General Setting - this is the whole domain of why we are building up the capabilities of next-gen projects to do precisely what you’ve requested. There’s a lot more to come with next-gen projects.

Will come back to you with another reply to your suggested 15 improvements to Next-gen projects.

@Jason Wong Hey Jason! Thanks for the quick reply! Super excited to hear that most things are planned to be executed.

About point #3: The current portfolio is a bit complicated. It would be great to just have something like the next-gen project roadmap and kanban combined, divided to swimlanes of projects, and have a progress bar, issue counter, team mates, and an estimation date for each one. The estimation should be based on the individual roadmap of each project. Having the users filter will help the management and team leaders understand the statue of their employees, and would also allow each user to see their individual tasks. I think the individual one should even be part of the dashboard along with the simple To Do list.

Something like this:

I'd like to add 2 other things!

1. Disable the option to added double labels - For example, if the label 'Widget' is already added the label 'widget' shouldn't be allowed. It creates a mess if different users add the same labels in different formats - It makes it unnecessarily a bit more complicated to find all the relevant issues later on.

2. The left panel can be a bit confusing. It has 2 states:

State 1

State 2

It would be great to just have one state - it really confuses people, and they don't understand how to navigate to certain things.

Something like this:

Thanks again! Your improvements are awesome and I think my colleagues and many others will find Jira much more likable and simple to use :)

Like • Jason Wong likes this

Hi @Tal Levi,

I’ve put together some commentary for you on the other items in your post

Next Gen Project Improvements:

Opening an issue from the board should keep it in the board, instead of sending it to the backlog. - when you open (create?) an issue on the board (using the new inline create), it should definitely stay on the board and not send the issue to the backlog. We’ve been developing the board so that issues created on the board are created inline and stay in the position you created them. Could I get you to share more details on how this is happening on your next-gen board?
Need restrictions for closing sprints - the general direction over time is that we will add more granular permissions. We note that more granular sprint permissions was a feature request we responded to and shipped to Classic projects only a few years ago and so sprint permissions is something we’ll consider again with next-gen projects as well. With Classic projects, we found that more people preferred the default where permissions were open by default, with the ability to lock the sprint permission down later on if they wanted to. Can you tell me why, in your case, why you only want certain people completing sprints and not everyone?
Flags should appear on issue cards if added on board and show the feature flag - we’ll be considering updating this to the information shown on the card and card layout customisations.
Show on card of issue if it has blockers (color / icon) - You can do this with the flag card feature. Just hover over the card and click on the menu to find the Add flag option. The card color will also turn red. If you click through to the full issue view, the flag icon is shown next to the status selector. There’s a demo of it in this part of the New Jira webinar at t=20:44(this link should take you to the part where it demos the flag https://youtu.be/2sqKfhnarnI?t=1244)
Set time for adding comments on issues (for example: Add comment tomorrow morning) so adding a comment that will have a timer to add it in the future? Can you describe when you might want to do that?
Add a checklist option in issues description (just like number & bullet lists) This is coming! You’ll see it appear in the new editor where you add description and comments.
Have 'Suggested Related Issues' for every issues (Can be in the same dropdown as 'History' / 'Comment', etc) - That way duplicates can be avoided. (Based on syntax). This is something we’ll consider in the future.
Allow copy-pasting videos - like images. The new issues should support this.
Duplicate projects / settings - Be able to duplicate projects, or at least their settings - Most have very common settings, like issue types, and columns. Would save time. The ability to create project templates is on the roadmap but I can’t give any timeframes at the moment.
Zeplin integration - we don’t have plans to build this ourself but we are investing in great APIs and plugin points in the UI for vendors and ecosystem developers to build the integrations. What kind of integration would you like to see in Zeplin? We are thinking about what kind of data and UI elements we need to build to make integrations easier to implement and more useful for users.
Epics in road-maps should show how long it would take based on the estimations added to each issue under the epic summed up (considering weekends, and holidays based on location). We’ve been investigating some options to add in some elements of forecasting but I don’t have any information yet on whether we’ll implement this.
Have a mode that lets users add issues without opening the whole popup (like in Asana). The pop-up modal for creating Jira issues hasn’t yet been updated with the whole new Jira design so there will probably be some changes you’ll see here. For the teams here, can I get you to tell me why would you prefer a smaller pop-up?
Save description templates - When testing a certain feature the 'Steps to reproduce' description usually partially repeats itself. It would be nice to save 'templates' / auto-fill the description. For example: Testing a contact form plugin will include the following steps: Create a site > Add a contact for to site and continue with a specific flow. (Of course this is a very short version). Default values is something we’re working on and later on project templates that you can define so that creating subsequent projects require less manual setup.
Adding an issue to an epic when opening it, instead of doing it separately after it's opened. (Like the issue link field in classic projects). If you have the epic filter enabled on the backlog or board it will create the issue in that epic. Or if you enable the swimlanes to be group by epic, it will then create the issue inline in the epic’s swimlane.
Backlog Filters - Add issue type filter to the backlog. Yes we’re very likely to implement this one.

Also to follow recent updates to next-gen, we’ve also just brought back the next-gen release notes to Atlassian community so that you can follow the updates we’ve been shipping (watch or comment on the page) and ask further questions.

Next-gen release notes for Jira Software Cloud. For instance, we recently shipped the ability to add colors to epics, export the roadmap to an image and real-time boards!

Show on card of issue if it has blockers (color / icon) - You can do this with the flag card feature. Just hover over the card and click on the menu to find the Add flag option.

Well ... no, that is not the answer. If the issue already has a linked "blocked by" issue - why would the user have to manually add a flag on top of that?

Like • Tal Levi likes this

Hey @Jason Wong :) Sorry for the delayed answer!

1. It doesn't work - keeps on sending it to the backlog and it's super annoying - especially when opening bugs, since they're usually handled immediately by developers, and not everyone remembers that they need to get them out of the backlog. It would be great to even have a checkbox or something when opening an issue that defines whether it should be sent to the backlog or not.

2. It was following a bug that was solved! People could close sprints of other projects from their project - solved now!

4. We're using the flags feature to mark issues that are covered by feature flags. Moreover, it sucks to add it manually and once all blockers are closed we'll need to remove it manually as well. In the classic an icon is added automatically to the card of an issue with blockers and when hovering over it you can see a list of all the blocker's Jira Ids and their status - if they're resolved the issue ID is crossed-out.

5. We're a global company so sometimes we'd want to add the comment at someone else's time, and sometimes teams like Support, who works at night time, want to set the time for the morning. And people who work weekends. Not critical at all - nice to have.

10. It would be nice to have the design of a feature that the issue is about, and have the CSS that it generates added as well, instead of adding a link / adding screenshots. Also, just nice to have.

12. We'd like to have a mode that doesn't open a popup. Asana has an ability to click on the plus sign (just like the new new one in the next-gen kanban) and it lets you write just the summary, and when pressing enter it moves to the next one. Sort of a 'checklist', but they're still normal cards on the board.