How to use Jira Components - Tips and Best Practices (Infographic)

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Jira component is an issue-grouping technique, used for breaking all project’s issue pull into smaller parts.

📊 Components offer a great way to structure issues in Jira; especially when you work with reporting and need to set up automation. 

But as any other data-organizing technique, they require special principles and some maintenance to keep your Jira instance clean and your infrastructure well-performing.

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Our team at Jexo have created this 5 Tips on How to Use Jira Components Infographic for you to save as a reference or reminder of the best practices when using Jira components. 👇👇👇

What are Components?

If issues are the bricks of your project , components act like the building blocks. 🏗

They are especially handy when you want to generate quality reports, collect useful data and be able to organize it for further breakdown and analysis.

Companies use Jira issues to track individual tasks of various kinds, eg. user stories, separate features to build, software bugs, or even internal tickets, like the ones HR department needs to track.

In these cases, components help to group these issues based on their functionality, features, departments, and so on.

Why Components?

Components are popular for a number of reasons:

• You can keep track of all of your components in the component management page.
• You can use standardized component names, i.e. avoid typos (like when using labels, for example)
• You can assign an issue automatically based on a component when creating the issue.
• You can create an unlimited number of components. 

In other words, components are custom fields with unique features that help you streamline your process and segment issues in your project.

A great advantage of components is that they require a Jira admin or project lead to create or edit them, this way individual users won’t be able to interfere with the project data.

✅ Tips and best practices for creating and maintaining Jira Components 

 

However, Components can only be used for Company-managed projects at the moment and are by default project-specific, but the latter limitation can be overcome with the help of apps that allow creating cross-project components.

[Yatish Madhav]

Once again, I am in awe of your articles @Katie Zavhorodnia_Appfire  - thanks for this insightful one.

We hardly use components but I know some of our users do use it and it would be a great one to look into so we can use, administer and manage Jira better.

Random one... what is the diff between bricks anc building blocks? :P or is that the point hehe

Thank you

[Matt Doar]

"You can create an unlimited number of components"

I'd recommend limiting it to a few thousand or issues may not load in the UI

[Dave Liao]

@Katie Zavhorodnia_Appfire - thanks for reminding me about auto-assignments based on Component!

I don't use the feature myself (I prefer to auto-assign based on Project Automation rules if needed) but I should remind my clients about it. Definitely faster and easier than writing an Automation rule. 🙃

[Katie Zavhorodnia_Appfire]

Thank you @Yatish Madhav - so happy you find them useful.

What I meant is blocks of bricks like in Lego 😀 if it makes sense 

[Katie Zavhorodnia_Appfire]

@Matt Doar absolutely true.

The capacity of components is unlimited but for efficient component management that would be understandable and easy-to-remember for all users, the best practice is to limit it to a few dozens per project.

[Katie Zavhorodnia_Appfire]

@Dave Liao thank you for bringing here another way of auto-assigning. It's a great alternative.

Yes, setting Automation rules may be a bit of a challenge, especially when administering multiple projects.

[Dave Liao]

When managing assignment rules across projects, that’s when we usually use Project Automations, since Components are project-specific. 😅