What would be your advice to first-time Jira Software admins?

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Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
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January 26, 2018

Absolutely.  Projects, config change, add-on requests, user access control and general help/support all tend to have different field and process models.  Hence different screens and workflows, so you need different issue types.

Obviously, when naming them, you should take the standard advice of not allowing too much variation. 

I wouldn't have Project Create, Project tracking, Project change and Config change as four types.  There's only two types needed there.   Project is a request for a new project where I will track that project until it's deleted.  A change is a change, whether it's for one project, a group or global (that's where I'd use components like project, user, system, etc)

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Sarah Schuster
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January 26, 2018

Thank you for this! Learned something new today :)

Sarah Schuster
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January 26, 2018

Great feedback @Ignacio Pulgar!!! All added points are fantastic, but especially I think #6 and #8 are both under-appreciated but highly valuable points that every admin needs to understand. 

Thanks again!

JiraYo
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January 26, 2018

- SSL is poorly supported during upgrades. If you are going to use SSL, be aware that you must manually edit files and copy back things like keystores after every upgrade to jira core. If SSL wasnt a project requirement for us (and pretty much a necessity in this day and age) , I would NOT have used it because jira is clearly not ready for it...

 

- Don't use the built in database (but thats obvious i think) as many plugins do not support it. Use a real SQL database.

- Many things that you would think would be simple things require purchased plugins to achieve. Be aware of that in budgeting. Most functionality is added by pay-for plugins. I have not found a  free marketplace similar to codeplex yet.

- jira pay support is pretty good at finding and fixing issues. its worth the money.

 

That's my only advice as i've only been using jira for two months. I like reading the other tips, but many are I think geared towards an intermediate admin with 6 months - 1 year of usage under their belt. For someone who is setting up jira off the side of their desk, plan to spend a few dedicated weeks *at least* getting the system online and ready to process requests. You're not going to push out jira and have it all working in just a few afternoons if you haven't ever deployed it before. Its not *that* turn key....

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Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
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January 26, 2018

I'd challenge this a little.

- It's not SSL that is unsupported, it's non-standard configurations.  And they're unsupported because Atlassian can't possibly know what you're doing with your servers.  So, authentications, load balancing, config tweaks, memory settings, and and and.

In fact, I would recommend NOT using SSL at all in Atlassian applications.  Stick them behind a proxy and let the proxy do all the SSL work.  It's faster and easier, and you then only have to worry about SSL when you upgrade the proxy.

- Absolutely right on the built in database.  But it goes further than add-ons.  The built in databases are not supported at all.  They can, and do, fail catastrophically.

- Most people don't think "simple things should be standard", they think "I want to do things differently to Jira so I want it".  Most of these are NOT simple things, they're specific requirements. 

Some, however, very much are.  Install a plain Jira and look at the list of available conditions and validators on workflow transitions.  It's a bit pathetic.  This is for historical reasons, which I could write a short essay on.  If I did, you'd understand why it's that way. That doesn't make it any less pathetic given some of the recent changes.

But you're 100% right when you say "you're going to want some add-ons", even if it's just some that patch over what should be standard workflow functions.

(I could also be a bit smug about the "not that turn key" - I got it running and reconfigured for users in my first week's experience.  And through a major version upgrade the following week.  But it was Jira 2.7.3 to 3.0.3.  It's changed...)

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Robin Surland January 26, 2018

I work with multiple teams that are doing VERY different work across the organization and each one has unique needs so I didn't have much choice but to customize. If you are starting a brand new instance of Jira in this type of environment and and you have been elected to be the Admin, my advice is:

  1. Create a naming convention before you change anything and append the way Jira natively names things rather than change them completely so that when you have to look for help, you know what you are looking for. (i.e. If Jira names it PMT Screen Scheme, You name it Purchasing Screen Scheme, not just Purchasing)
  2. Document what you are doing and the click path you followed to get there. In the beginning, all of the screens look the same and you will get lost easily or find yourself clicking around in circles unable to find what you are looking for. 
  3. I found this image very helpful not only in understanding how Jira works, but in explaining why everyone can't be an admin! https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver/project-screens-schemes-and-fields-938847220.html 
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Anton Chemlev - Toolstrek -
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January 29, 2018

Hi,

Here are my thoughts:

1. First of all, read the manuals! Don't stop only on documentation for your current app version, read previous versions in order to understand what changes were made and why. 

2. Search the community for answers, post quiestions, try to answer another app admins questions. This will develop your problem solving skills.

3. Practice, practice, practice! Make staging/development server and try your ideas, tutorials, etc. If you can't afford it, install Atlassian SDK and run apps from it, it is very easy.

4. Backup your instance and database. That's the main advice))

Monique vdB
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January 29, 2018

I love #2 😉

Andrew Culver
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January 29, 2018

Sadly, if asked today, I'd ask any prospective first-time Jira admin to look at a different solution.

Atlassian's development team has been ignoring several highly voted issues for over a decade. Many of these remain unassigned and with no progress.

MS SQL Server 2016, which was released in June 2016, has yet to be supported. Only after sustained complaining, has Atlassian finally started to begin looking at this, a year and a half after they should have.

It seems that Atlassian isn't providing the development necessary to keep Jira up to date and meeting customers' needs. If implementing an issue tracking system today, I'd be considering other options.

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Ignacio Pulgar
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January 29, 2018

I think Atlassian looks every suggestion sent to them, especially those with many votes.

I'd bet they have had many sessions around those issues, but some implementations just might either not be feasible or have a huge impact on other features and/or integrations with other apps.

The more you know an app, the more you'll know about its limitations, and that would be probably true also for alternative solutions.

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BillyP
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January 29, 2018

Sorry to hear about your frustrations.  

I know Atlassian strives for customer support, through their VOC (Voice of the Customer) Program.  

Working in the software development world, I know sometimes the back burner is way WAY in the back!  I wish some of the hot keys were the same!  

I'm guessing Postgres isn't a suitable solution to your database requirement?

Andrew Culver
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January 29, 2018

We've been running on MS SQL for years. I don't think telling all MS SQL + Jira customers (Confluence has the same problem) to switch their database is a good solution, unless you're trying to lose customers. Our DB team is now running a 2014 cluster just to support Jira because we can't migrate to our 2016 cluster.

The MS SQL 2016 issue was opened in Aug 2015. The first update we saw from Atlassian was Jan 3, 2018 -- over 2 years without any update to the many customers who had voted and commented on this issue. Now they've just given a vague update that 2016 will be support in "one of the future Jira releases." If they strive for customer support, paying more attention to existing requests like this one would be a good start.

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Sarah Schuster
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January 29, 2018

Hey everybody!!!

WOW! What enthusiasm here! All of your input is just fantastic :) We here on the team are just thrilled at the responses and advice from everyone in this thread! 

I added a new post for this week: What Makes For a Successful (or Failed) Jira Software Cloud Implementation? 

I noted this in thread #2, but I'll restate here as well. These discussion threads (8 in total) are feeding a future (first-time ever) Jira Software Cloud New Admin Playbook!  The goal of this playbook is to introduce each major feature of Jira Software, provide strategy points to critically think through how to best implement each feature, best practices per feature and finally, links out to documentation, trainings and such.

(Wish I had this when I was starting out!)

I'll be featuring the pro tips and advice all of you post in these threads (along with other Atlassians) in the upcoming playbook for a truly supportive experience.

Anticipated release is Spring 2018. More details to come...

Thanks again for your generosity in knowledge sharing and support,

Sarah 

Claudio Ombrella January 30, 2018

Hi Andrew, I am sorry for your frustration and I understand. Software companies sometime have a hard time to fulfil any and all requests, I have developed some experience through the years. I am not sure how many customers are running on MS-SQL today, but without wearing the Atlassian t-shirt, I would say, why not moving to something like PostgreSQL or My-SQL? Our Jira instance at Autodesk with 2.2 million issues runs with My-SQL totally fine since years. I know this could be seen as "why should I fix someone else problem?" but it could give you a great opportunity to move forward and keep using Jira which has many, many more interesting features that benefit your customers.

Sincerely

Claudio

Claudio Ombrella January 30, 2018

You are welcome @Sarah Schuster glad that we can improve future people's experience.

Brett Mayhew January 30, 2018

Link to image is broken.

Matthew Leach January 31, 2018

I'm betting it this is the correct link - this was VERY helpful for me: 

https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver071/project-screens-schemes-and-fields-802592517.html

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Mariano Galán Martín February 1, 2018

Hi everyone,

My advice:

1. Keep it simple as you can and reuse. This piece of advice is applicable for many points: workflows, custom fields, agile boards, dashboards, etc.

2. Limit the number of Jira Administrators. The less the better. It`s better only one Jira Admnistrator full dedicated than several ones partially dedicated. If you decide to have several, you should implement collaborative processes (with Atlassian tools too, obviously ;)).

3. Standarize configuration schema names, workflows, screens, etc. It's different "MT3 Screen-2" than "Development project [create] screen for [Bug]". In general, you should stablish name conventions.

4. Configure permission and notification schemes based in roles. Try to avoid use single users or groups. If you need change something related to notifications or permissions its easier to do it in the roles section of every project (in many cases changing the group membership of a user is enougth). This allows to reuse notification and permission schemes for projects of the same category. Oh!, other piece of advice: use the project categories, It's more usefull than it seems (you can use it in some dashboard gadgets and JQL, and for organization purposes, of course).

5. Reuse configuration schemes for projects. Not always use the default templates to create new projects. If you need a new project of an existing project category (eg. Scrum development projects) you can use the option "create with share configuration" in the first creation pop-up. Make your own project templates. And if your Jira instance is Server and has installed Script Runner you can use the "copy project" built-in script that can copy versions, components, roles assigments and even issues if you want!

6. Reuse custom fields. When you have to create a new custom field, check before if exists other that you can use or add a new context for it.

7. If you have to implement some requierement: first, try to do it with configuration (and perhaps a bit of simple scripting). Second, search an add-on (app) that covers the necesities. And finally, analize to to it through custom development (don´t forget the Jira API REST).

8. Keep in the loop. Subscribe to Atlassian newsletters and blogs, follow Twitter accounts Atlassian-related, Linkedin forums and people that are working with Atlassian products, "watch" confluence spaces of oficcial documentation, etc.

9. Atlassian University and Certifications. May be a good way to learn.

10. Attend to Atlassian events: meetups, AUGs, and Summit of course!

I hope it was helpful and good luck for the newbies!

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Ignacio Pulgar
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February 1, 2018

Fully agree on all those 10 points!

Douglas Powell February 3, 2018

I started writing ... and then realized I'd pretty much written the same thing Mariano Galán Martín did. His post is right on point. 

Following this doctrine has kept our JIRA clean, simple and manageable and made it scalable to sixty individual projects split between two general categories - service desk / support and development / customer projects.

Deleted user February 3, 2018

+1 for #3

I can't tell you how many hours I've spent fixing configuration changes that were made by administrators who really should not have been administrators.

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Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
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February 3, 2018

@[deleted]- that has been 25% of my career for a decade.

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John Price
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February 7, 2018

Don't set up a Jira support team that just executes user requests as stated, or you'll end up with a million fields, workflows, etc. as many have said above.  Every time someone asks for a substantive change, a knowledgeable Jira consultant/admin (uh-oh, that's YOU!) needs to guide the conversation away from specific technical requests and towards a discussion about what they are trying to accomplish.  

Very frequently teams' processes have never been rigorously streamlined, pared back, or analyzed for efficiency.  That should happen first.  I recently saw a team moving from a Trello board with 20+ columns to Jira with no analysis of whether the original board made sense.  If you aren't willing to say NO you'll end up with workflows like

New

Requirements

Tech Review

Test Analysis

Ready

In Development

Ready for Test

In Test

In Staging

Ready for Production

 

etc.  Don't let this happen to you!

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Ignacio Pulgar
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February 7, 2018

This answer is SO TRUE! I'd vote for your first paragraph to be included in all Jira Admin guides.

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Sarah Schuster
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February 8, 2018

So true, @John Price! Thank you for your valuable advice!

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