What are your go-to apps as a Jira Cloud Admin?

Maggie Norby Adams
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
June 2, 2022

Hi Jira Cloud Admins! Maggie here from Atlassian's Ecosystem team 👋🏻

We're preparing for an upcoming series on Marketplace apps and integrations, and we'd love to hear from you. 

What are your favorite Marketplace apps? In particular, we're interested in hearing which tools make your life easier or help you do more as an Admin. 

Thank you in advance!

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Lorenzo Phillips
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June 2, 2022

We’re a cloud-first Atlassian partner so all of these apps are for the cloud. But these apps are on our checklist for our clients and we use them internally as well.

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Leonard Hussey June 2, 2022

Aside from the usuals: JMWE, ScriptRunner

  • Custom Charts (Old Street Solutions) - for dashboards, especially Shared dashboards for JSM portal users
  • External Share (Old Street Solutions) - for sharing confluence pages with granular restriction. E.g. a KB / Guide on a per-Organization (external customers) basis.
  • JIRA Cloud for Sheets - GSheet extension
  • Time to SLA - far more robust SLA handling solution - Especially needed for complex SLA entitlements
  • External Data for Jira Fields - Covers many field dependencies needed for JSM Portal where the available options depend on the Organization a portal user belongs to.

100% cloud.

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Haddon Fisher June 2, 2022
  • ScriptRunner for Jira - you need it for the JQL functions, but scripted fields are almost as essential for program management, even if they are a shadow of their Server selves.
  • JSU Automation Suite - adds most of the conditions, validators, and post functions you thought would come out of the box.
  • Rich Filters - drill into dashboards, custom data sets, and basic number gadgets.
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Brijesh June 2, 2022

Structure for Jira (from ALM Works) by far is the most useful App for us.

We also use Swanly for Cross project fixversions 

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Sergei Gridnevskii
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June 3, 2022

I applied for vacancy in ALM Works 5 years ago, unfortunately did not pass the second interview

John Varela June 2, 2022

Top three:

  • Structure Cloud by ALM Works
  • Timesheets by Tempo
  • qTest for JIRA Test Automation by QASymphony

 

Other good ones we use, ranked by usage:

  • STAGIL Tables by STAGIL
  • Great Gadgets by StonikByte
  • Jql Search Extensions for Jira by Digital Toucan
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Dave Liao
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June 2, 2022

@Maggie Norby Adams -

On Cloud? I rely on:

  • Structure - it's an old standby, sometimes you need to go beyond Epic > Story > Sub-task relationships, yeah?
    • On a Structure board, there are lots of nifty "calculated" columns (WSJF, or counts of issues in a grouping).
    • On Structure for Data Center, I can bulk update issues. On Structure for Cloud (currently), we just use the app to more easily group our issues.
  • Structure.Gantt - allows you to extend Structure boards to visualize project sequence and dependencies.
  • ScriptRunner - I use ScriptRunner to manage mischief using Scripted Fields, and being able to bulk update or bulk copy issue aspects within/across projects (Resolutions, Versions). Magic! ⚡️p.s. Can't wait for their built-in scripts to get beefier!
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Cory Tsang June 2, 2022

My core set of add-ons are:

  • Structure and Structure.Gantt for Jira Cloud (ALM Works) - by far the most flexible tool for laying out plans or drilling into historic data. Being able to edit inline from a listview is awesome (I know JWM projects provide that but those have other limitations that make it less viable).
  • Deep Clone (Codefortynine) - for cloning out entire epics
  • Advanced Bulk Edit (Codefortynine) - for touching up post-clone :)
  • Scriptrunner Enhanced Search (Adaptavist) - Cloud makes this less flexible because of the 1000 issue limit to searches, but it is necessary when working with Epics to duplicate things you can do in Structure but need a filter for (like populating dashboards or boards)
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Kelly Arrey
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June 2, 2022
  • Structure for Jira (ALM Works) - I wouldn't try to run Jira without it. The ability to build flexible, extended hierarchies of tickets with a few lines of well-placed JQL is unmatched in my experience.
  • Smart Checklist for Jira. Pro - Very handy for a lighter-weight alternative to sub-tasks which can be used at any level of a hierarchy.
  • Worklogs by SolDevelo - Very handy tool for extracting Time Spent reports!
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Joseph Chung Yin
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June 2, 2022

@Maggie Norby Adams -

Structure and Structure Gantt by ALM

Scriptrunner for Jira by Adaptavist

JMWE for Jira by Appfire

JSU Automation Suite for Jira by beecom Products AG

eazyBI Reports and Charts for Jira by eazyBI

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Mike Rathwell
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June 2, 2022

My list includes:

  • Jira Misc Workflow Extensions (Appfire): A definitive "Swiss Army Knife" of tools that I refuse to operate a Jira instance without. It lets me crisply validate and condition workflows and events, share setups, make async sync, and handle extensions which Automation seems to struggle with.12
  • Structure for Jira (ALM Works)While some might say there is crossover with other tools, that may be true but I have found in a 100% penetration system, the more ways to visualize and manage issues, the better. While heavily used by tech staff, decidedly NON-technical users relied on it to run some very busy departments
  • JXL (Fine Software): For those that have serious concerns about not being in a spreadsheet, this lets them feel like they are at home.
  • ScriptRunner for Jira (Adaptavist): A complementary one to JMWE; some overlap but each have their strengths. If I can't find a way between these two... it's possibly just too weird.
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Matthew Chapman June 2, 2022

I run a small team covering projects and SD, I found these have hugely simplified things:

1. Structure: GANTT view for Project Plans/resource utilisation

2. Activity Timeline: for workload planning and time logging (wow, do many useful features)

3. CLERK: for billing time/invoices into XERO (very clean/nice solution) 

4. Create from Template: for reusable templates for SD calls and Projects (big time saver) 

5. Timesheets: is a handy/quick way to extract worklogs  

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Dave Liao
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June 2, 2022

Good call @Joseph Chung Yin eazyBI is definitely reporting on steroids for any Jira instance.

Dirk Ronsmans
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June 2, 2022

But also has a pretty steep learning curve :) Dummy proof/Beginner material it is not!

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Dave Liao
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June 3, 2022

@Dirk Ronsmans - 100%! That tool does require discipline to use.

What I suggest to those thinking about eazyBI:

  1. Do you (or your users) know what questions they want to answer (or insights they want to gain) from their data?
  2. Have they reviewed the demo eazyBI dashboards on the Getting Started page? https://docs.eazybi.com/eazybi/getting-started?eazybi-all
  3. If users (or admins) need help with eazyBI, they should check (and/or post) on the eazyBI Community site: http://community.eazybi.com/

If posting publicly isn't an option (say, for sensitive questions), I'd reach out to the eazyBI team - they're friendly and helpful experts.

p.s. Hmm, I should break out the above into a Community article, eh?

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Haddon Fisher June 3, 2022

I'd love EazyBI if I could give it to users, but you practically need a master's degree to use it effectively. That being said, I am not sure how you could make it less complicated either!

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Sergei Gridnevskii
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June 2, 2022

We used to have JMWE for years but Automation for Jira naturally killed it. Now we use it only for complex conditions on issue creation.

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Mike Rathwell
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June 3, 2022

I DID follow that thinking, @Sergei Gridnevskii , but the inability to deal with attachments without hacks along with the ability for rather more crisp validation and conditioning such as you cite reversed me.

Since I can do all the things in JMWE, AND all the automation is contained in a single place I have taken the Company/Team managed mindset to this.

Now:

  • JMWE for the Company managed type stuff.
  • Automation for the snowflaky stuff that a given Project Admin might want to add to just their Team/project
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Anne Saunders
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June 3, 2022

For my home instance (We use it with our teens to manage school and extracurricular activities) I love Checklist for Jira Cloud. It's a nice way to contain related steps inside an issue without having to navigate between the parent issue and a slew of Sub-tasks. The checklist items are assignable, there's a ton of configurability, and each user can also keep a non-issue-related personal checklist.

At work, we use Harvest Time Tracking by 42nd to coordinate and sync worklogs with Harvest. It's not 100% foolproof and it took us a while to herd all of our cats into using it correctly, but it's significantly more usable than Harvest's native app, and works with both Jira Software and Jira Service Management. 

We're evaluating two timesheet apps right now, Team Worklog Reports Lite, and Timesheet Tracking for Jira. They both do the same thing (generate a filterable timesheet report based on worklogs) but TWRL gives a more robust downloadable spreadsheet, and TTfJ gives REALLY nice visualizations. Since both are free, I'm thinking we may keep both.

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Dave Liao
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June 3, 2022

Good call on Checklist! I wish Checklist for Cloud was beefier like its on-premise cousin, but I guess it's a matter of time?

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Dominique June 6, 2022

I definitely go to the following two tools the most:

  • JIRA Cloud for Sheets - GSheet extension
  • Structure for Jira (ALM Works)
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Anne Saunders
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June 6, 2022

I use Jira Cloud for Sheets so often, I forgot it wasn't native functionality! It's a MUST if you work in GSheets!

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Hua Soon SIM _Akeles_
Marketplace Partner
Marketplace Partners provide apps and integrations available on the Atlassian Marketplace that extend the power of Atlassian products.
June 7, 2022

We are using the Site Statistics for Jira Cloud that we built ourselves using Atlassian Forge framework.

It allows Jira Cloud admins to have a quick overview on the number of

  • issues
  • projects
  • custom fields 
  • workflows
  • groups

My favourite feature is the historical charts which tracks the level of utilisation (e.g. issue count growth across the months). It gives great satisfaction for all Jira Admins to see how they drove up the usage of their Jira over time.📈

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Susanne Harelius June 7, 2022

We are currently just starting our cloud journey so we have not procured any so far. It is a pain that the storage is separate so we need to procure every add-on thoroughly ;) 

But in procurement right now we have. 

Canned response for Jira - we just this heavily on our DC instance. 

Scriptrunner - goes without saying I think ;) 

Checklist - also something VERY much used and loved in DC. 

iHub for Cloud - this is the engine for a lot of automation we do in our DC instance. We use it a lot with Insight (which is no longer an add-on). 

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Kelly Arrey
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June 7, 2022

I'm not a ScriptRunner poweruser by any stretch, but we regarded ScriptRunner as a requirement on Server. When we migrated to Cloud, we found that several of the Scriptrunner capabilities we relied on on Server were not available on cloud.  We've been on Cloud for 15 months now and haven't missed ScriptRunner so far. Usual disclaimers apply: YMMV, Deuces are wild, void where prohibited by law, etc.

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Hua Soon SIM _Akeles_
Marketplace Partner
Marketplace Partners provide apps and integrations available on the Atlassian Marketplace that extend the power of Atlassian products.
June 14, 2022

We are also using Canned Response for Jira for our Service Desk. 

It is a time saver 

Dirk Ronsmans
Community Leader
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June 7, 2022

Coming from Server, I'm having a hard time choosing Cloud apps.

The ones I tend to suggest are:

  • Email this Issue (JETI): makes the email triggers a lot more refined and also allows you to use your own (HTML) templates
  • Tempo for Time registration/Planning especially when working with multiple accounts to book against.
  • Structure or BigPicture: I only recently started exploring Structure in favor of BigPicture (since you all seem to be praising it :)) for Portfolio planning.
  • EazyBI or PowerBI Pro depending on what my clients already have in their own arsenal :) I'm still bummed Atlassian Analytics is only going to be an Enterprise feature, such a missed chance.

 

Scriptrunner used to be a no brainer but I seem to be favoring Automation (A4J) for most of my automating needs these days. This might change again tho once they come out with Behaviours for cloud.

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Amir Katz (Outseer)
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June 9, 2022

We're on the cloud. My top apps (as admin), high to low:

  • JMWE
  • JEP (Enhancer Plugin for Jira)
  • ScriptRunner (the enhanced search)
  • JSU
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Remy Cox June 14, 2022

My top apps for daily use:
ActivityTimeline - for planning, workload calculation and timesheets/reporting.

ScriptRunner - admin app.

draw.io - app for diagrams in Confluence. 

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Kelly Arrey
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June 15, 2022

@Remy Cox Thanks for the pointer to ActivityTimeline, it looks very capable.

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