My organization is interested in using the JIRA for Outlook Plugin. We are in the healthcare space, so Privacy & Security are major considerations in any new adoption. I am attempting to get a 3-user pilot of the plugin approved, but my Privacy & Security staff have questions about the application capabilities advertised:
Add-in capabilities
When this add-in is used, it
Can send data over the Internet
This add-in can read or modify the contents of any item in your mailbox, and create new items. It can access personal information -- such as the body, subject, sender, recipients, or attachments -- in any message or calendar item. It may send this data to a third-party service.
They have read these permissions and the assumption, I'm afraid, is that these permissions will be used indiscriminately. I believe that much of what's listed here is boilerplate. Are there members of your team who would be willing to speak to exactly what data the plugin is able to access/create on the user's behalf and clarify concerns over the use of "red flag" words such as "any" or "may"?
This could help me get beyond immediate objections based solely upon this copy and allow us to progress to evaluating the tool.
They have read these permissions and the assumption, I’m afraid, is that these permissions will be used indiscriminately. I believe that much of what’s listed here is boilerplate. Are there members of your team who would be willing to speak to exactly what data the plugin is able to access/create on the user’s behalf and clarify concerns over the use of “red flag” words such as “any” or “may”?
This text is added by Microsoft depending on what permissions we ask. There are 4 levels of Outlook add-in permissions: Restricted, ReadItem, ReadWriteItem, and ReadWriteMailbox. These levels are cumulative (you can read more about them here).
For most of the functionality, it’s enough for us to request ReadItem permission: this is needed so when the user creates an issue and includes the current email or the user attaches the email to an existing issue, we could retrieve the email body and send it as an attachment to Jira (by the way, the user controls this data and if they decide that they don’t want to disclose the email in Jira anymore, they can open Jira issue page and delete attached email from there).
But the reason we require the higher permission level “ReadWriteMailbox” is because this allows us to add support for shared mailboxes, which is on our roadmap, in the future (here are technical requirements for this).
Unfortunately, we can’t support shared mailboxes with just the ReadItem permission level.
To summarize,
we request the higher permission level but we perform only Read operations on currently opened email
we do not read any emails which are not opened by the user
we do not modify any emails
the email body is being sent over the network to Jira as a Jira attachment when the user includes the email while creating a Jira issue or attaching the email to the existing issue
only users who have access to the Jira issue can see the email
the user still controls the email and the email can be deleted from the Jira UI
Edit: I should mention I enjoy the plugin quite a bit. There are just a few features/tweaks I wish it had. For example, see below.
I wish the UI/UX utilized Atlassian's new user interface guidelines, similar to how the Yasoon Outlook plugin looks. The current user interface looks quite dated.
There was an option to View all issues from this sender so I could see a list of issues the sender has submitted to our service desk in the past.
I know this is dumb, but I wish the iconography and images weren't distorted (see below screenshot). In our JSM project the images and icons look sleek and high resolution, but in the Outlook Jira plugin they are shrunk and distorted at odd proportions.
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
April 27, 2021 edited
Hey, @davidwashburn thanks for reaching out and for your feedback.
Things to address here: though there were no major features added to the app in the last few months, we constantly improve stability and performance. Regarding UI/UX, we're probably not going to use Atlassian-style UI elements. Let me explain: The add-in is being run inside of Outlook either web or desktop. And for add-ins to look natural (no matter if these add-ins are running in Outlook, Excel, any other Microsoft app) Microsoft has developed Fluent Design System. And, obviously, we utilize UI elements, fonts, etc. from that system.
As for distorted icons, we fetch "large" sized icons from Jira, so at first, glance looks like the images are being compressed somewhere on the way, or it's just the way raster (.jpg, .png) images are rendered in Outlook. But we'll take a closer look into it.
Regarding "View all issues from this sender": this looks like a great feature suggestion. You can create a public feature request at jira.atlassian.com/proejcts/API and we'll implement that feature as it gains traction.
@Maksym Yokha I appreciate the update, thanks for the detailed feedback. I respect the decision to use Microsoft's Fluent design, I'm just a sucker for visual appeal like the Yasoon Outlook integration. But I can understand why you've chosen the native Microsoft user experience.
I will certainly make a suggestion on the feature request project since I believe that feature would elevate the integration in a huge way. It's a solid app, we like the way you've integrated attachments onto Jira issues.
If you have time tracking fields set up for issues of a particular issue type, you are able to manage original and remaining estimates from within Jira Cloud for Outlook add-in.
In particular, you can set time tracking fields when creating an issue from the "Create issue" tab:
If your workflow includes issue status transition with fields to edit and the list of those fields includes time tracking ones, then you are able to set/edit original and remaining estimates from a transition modal which would pop up in an add-in.
Currently, the limitation is that you're not able to view/edit time tracking fields when viewing an issue from the "View issues" tab. But if that's what you're looking for you can create a public ticket at jira.atlassian.com/projects/API using the 'Jira Cloud for Outlook' component for the team to implement that when public ticket gains some traction.
I assume you need to be a licenced Jira user to utilise this feature. Not all staff have access to Jira. Is there special setup/policy required to give access from Outlook to only Jira users? I could not find anything in the documentation.
You don't need any additional licenses for Jira Cloud for Outlook to work. If users have access to particular issues in Jira itself they should have access to those issues from within the Jira Cloud for Outlook add-in.
Consider:
If users have access to issues in Jira but not in the add-in they need to make sure they've logged into a correct Jira site.
Jira Cloud for Outlook works with Jira Cloud (hence the name Jira Cloud for Outlook) but doesn't work with Jira server.
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I think it needs to be made clearer in this article or the name of the tool that this add-in only works with when the Outlook client application is directly bound to the Outlook 365online accounts.
The use of the generic word 'Outlook' and the pictures of a ribbon with a button marked 'Jira' give the reader the impression that this is an add-in that is installed in the Outlook client application to enables any email from any source to be turned into a Jira issue or attachment, when that's really not the case.
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
August 27, 2021 edited
Hi, @David Bakkers Jira Cloud for Outlook add-in's usage is not limited by 365 online accounts.
Furthermore, this add-in can be used with using a work/school account as well as a Microsoft account on a variety of platforms (including Outlook web, desktop, and mobile apps).
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Every single time I tried to install it, I get a dialogue box from MSoft saying "Taking you to Microsoft 365 to complete this process", then I authenticate and I am logged into the web based interface for Outlook O365 online, which contains none of my email accounts, because I have never used Outlook O365 online.... ever. I use the Outlook client application exclusively on the desktop to access IMAP and POP accounts that have nothing to do with MSoft or O365 online.
If this tool is not limited to Outlook O365 accounts, can you please detailed provide instructions on HOW to install it directly in an Outlook client application on Windows 10 computer, as there is no information on how to do it via AppSource that I can find or work out.
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
August 27, 2021 edited
@David Bakkers Regardless of Windows/Mac you probably have the "Get add-ins" button in your Outlook desktop app which is going to open Microsoft AppSource in your default browser.
Next, search for "Jira Cloud for Outlook (Official)". It will require some kind of Microsoft account to log in (for me both organization account and `@outlook.com` worked).
Next, you need to "Get it now". Microsoft will ask you for permission to use your personal data and redirect you to the Outlook web app. And you'll need to "Add" add-in there.
After that add-in will appear in your desktop app.
One of the intermediate steps contains the "Singing into Microsoft 365 account" modal despite what it says, it doesn't require you to have a 365 subscription or anything. For instance, I managed to add an add-in using my `@outlook.com` account which is my personal account and doesn't have any subscriptions attached to it.
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@Maksym YokhaI do not have the "Get add-ins" button in my Outlook because it is not joined to my Outlook O365 online account using all that Windows 'Shared Experiences' stuff, so it doesn't matter if I install the tool in Outlook O365 online via AppSource using either method, the add-in will not be pushed up into my desktop Outlook application and therefore the Jira button will never appear on the ribbon.
When a person's Outlook application is not connected to O365 online via Shared Experiences, the Get add-ins button is removed from the ribbon. You can force it to appear on the ribbon, but it is greyed out and does nothing; this is a known 'feature' of Outlook.
Here is the add-in installed via AppSource and working in my Outlook O365 online account:
And here is my Outlook client application where I've force enabled the Get add-ins button on the ribbon to show it is deactivated, and that none of my email accounts are the O365 online account, and subsequently, the Jira button doesn't appear on the ribbon:
The Atlassian tool makes a wide range of assumptions as to how a user is using their Outlook app in relation to their O365 account and what privacy settings are or are not enabled between the two. Without all these things in place, not much of any value happens for those people, of which I am one.
So, what I am saying is that since none of these very specific requirements are stated in this article and not made apparent in the name of the tool or any of the documentation, people such as myself can easily get the wrong idea as to what the tool really needs to work in the way you are 'advertising' it as working.
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Excellent! So now that we both know the same thing, that the Jira Cloud for Outlook tool only works when a user's Outlook application is connected to an Exchange server or Microsoft 365 using a direct connection, and does not work with POP or IMAP, then put those words in the original article.
Just tell everyone, upfront, about this requirement and limitation. Don't just leave it to chance that they have to scroll through four pages of comments to get to your comment that discloses that important piece of information.
You are the original author of the article.... you can add to it.
Edit: In January 2020 @Maksym Yokha wrote "Unfortunately we don't support direct installation of this add-in into Outlook desktop (if that's what you're looking for). There's a ticket which you can watch and vote for https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/API-154".
There's only been 15 votes so far, probably in part because it takes a long time to run across.
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
December 6, 2021 edited
Hi @[deleted]
Thanks for your question.
Unfortunately, it doesn't work with JSM Customer Portal accounts due to the limitation of Jira API. In case it will be supported in the future, we will update this public ticket https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/API-142. Feel free to "watch" it and "vote".
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