How can I see projects assigned to me?

[Brandon Ward]

We have lots of project managers working on lots of projects. Each project has its own issues etc. and the projects are almost never related to one another.

So we're in need of the ability for a PM (or lead or whatever) to be able to quickly see a dashboard widget that has a list of all projects assigned to them, similar to a developer seeing the Issues Assigned to Me widget.

I can't figure out how to create/set this up - and it seems like such a small thing. Any ideas?

Best I've come up with is Issues Assigned to Me sorted by project, but if the PM doesn't have any currently assigned issues they won't see the project. You could, I suppose, put a dummy task/issue in each project and assign it to the PM, but that just seems silly. Jira is SO powerful, how can it be missing something as simple as this, or am I overlooking something obvious?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

I think there's an intrinsic difficulty here. How do you answer the question "what projects are assigned to me"? Before you can think about how to get that out of Jira, you need to define how it is stored in Jira.

For example, it might be I can create an issue, I can be assigned an issue, I am named as the project lead, I am named as a component lead, I am named in role X, I have schedule permission, and so-on.

I totally agree that it would be useful to have something that says "I am responsible for", but there's so many ways it might be defined, I'm not sure anyone has got a solution for you.

[Brandon Ward]

Ok - let's narrow it down then. Let's say we could guarantee that the project lead would NEVER have an issue, component etc. assigned to them - think of it in the simplest terms. I own projects A, C, and D. I want a gadget that shows those to me in a list, just those 3 and not the other 23 projects in the system. It should know to show those to me because I'm the project lead. Does that help?

Basically the search/pivot is: project where (lead == currentUser)

You could use a filter, but it's not shareable across PMs. The query would have to be project where (lead == "username") and then they'd have to change it to "myUserName". It needs to be simple like the Assigned To Me gadget.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Yes, that's a very valid rule. But it's part of what I was hinting at - there's loads of possible rules, so it's hard to code something to match them in a generic product. Which is why there isn't anything that would do this yet.

I think I'd be looking to write a gadget that implements it - one based on "project list" with a spot of extra code that matches current user to each project's lead.

[Sherry Reeves]

I would like to create a dashboard that shows all of the cases assigned to me

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Add gadgets that use the "assigned to me" built-in filter.

[nathan.grass]

For my current version of Jira it uses "assignee" in the advanced search. So the query is like: 

project = XX AND assignee = nathan.grass AND resolution = Unresolved ORDER BY priority DESC, updated DESC

Remove "project = XX AND" to ignore which project of course. :) 

[Lee Correll]

Just out of curiousity, why can't you use something role driven?

I have a filter that reads like

(project in projectsWhereUserHasRole("Default QA") OR project in projectsWhereUserHasRole("Business Analyst") OR project in projectsLeadbyUser() OR project in projectsWhereUserHasRole(Users)) AND updatedDate >= -1d

That sounds remarkably like what you are looking for...

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

It would, if the posters could decide that their "membership" rules are by role. The main problem here is that they aren't able to clearly define what they want, not so much that Jira can't do it!

[Brandon Ward]

Yup - I just wish our devs would do the same.

[Lindsay Travis]

Hi, I hope it's ok for me to join in this conversation.

I have exactly the same issue as Brandon, and while I understand that the definition of 'my projects' is not straightforward, given the power of Jira elsewhere, surely it's not insurmountable?

We're also reluctantly considering abandoning Jira because of this. It's important functionality for our project managers and also our clients.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

This is a trivial flaw that can't actually be fixed because there is no easy rule that can be implemented without annoying some of the customer base who would have a different definition.

There are workarounds, they are not onerous, but you really need to define "my projects" (ideally without crippling half the power that Jira has) and then you can actually start with something concrete.

[Brandon Ward]

ProWorkflow is AMAZING at this...but it can't hold a candle to Jira's bug/task management. I wish I could merge the two.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Ah, yes, I've been asked to "integrate" ProWorkflow with Jira once. It's got some very nice features for a number of types of end-users, but the developers were simply ignoring it because it didn't do what they needed. The company I was working with eventually decided that Jira was the right answer, but with a little investment in presenting it's data to non-developers (they got the devs to write a couple of report plugins basically)

[Brandon Ward]

It's not the ability, it's the fact that you pay so much for something that can't do 1 simple thing. Since the account team will be using this tool as much if not more than the rest of us, it's important that their recurring work be simple, templatable and easily managed. You just apparently can't have that with Jira - which sucks for the rest of us because we love most everything else. Probably going to drop it now because we haven't been able to set it up to their liking quickly enough. Sad panda is sad.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I really don't think this minor weakness is such a big deal (plus, of course, it's not actually easy to define "my projects" - that's not a problem in Jira, that's going to be an issue in any system that might provide multiple projects with powerful access rights)

Seriously, I'm well aware that Jira can look complex. But if you've got accounts teams that can't grasp this not-very-complex structure, I'd be worried about letting them have access to both your computers and finances. It's really not that complicated.

[Brandon Ward]

So I guess the answer is NO, NOT POSSIBLE. Which sucks, because this is pretty much a deal breaker for the PM team, which means we have to cancel our subscription before we even rolled this thing out - which makes the rest of the teams very sad - because it's perfect for everyone else.

Sigh - Sad Panda is Sad.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I'm not sure I'd be confident in your PM team if this is a deal breaker for them! I doubt you'll be able to find any software which makes them happy, if they're that fussy about one single thing.

I'd also think about showing them the "create" screen. If you do the permissions correctly for them (they can NOT create issues in any projects they should not be able to), then it will limit them to "their" projects.