How to improve Jira task management?

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The average employee is interrupted every three minutes. It takes some time to focus on the task again. It’s not strange that you may forget about some items on your to-do list. It happens sometimes. But what if you miss some important step in your work process? It can lead to postponed workflow and lost profits. Blaming your team members isn’t the best solution. How about improving Jira task management?

Workflow process automation helps avoid missing essential steps to complete your work efficiently. Even repetitive tasks and standard operation procedures (SOPs) can become easy-breezy with the ready-to-use solutions you find below. 

We’re going to be working smarter, not harder.

Overview of Jira Management Tools.

Here we’ll overview third-party add-ons that can do the job without complex configurations, programming, and additional tech skills. Any employee will handle it. Managers will not have to control every step. So, both parties will be satisfied.

All tools are designed for Cloud users and available for all Jira projects: Jira Software, Jira Core, and Jira Service Management.

1. Recurring Checklists and Report

Whether you’re organizing a product release, auditing the teamwork, or preparing financial statements, the checklist is always a good idea. Repetitive work doesn’t mean it’s unnecessary. Сonversely, it should be done carefully to avoid missing any essential steps.

Recurring Checklists and Report help managers to plan and control recurring tasks in Jira. There are 3 benefits that you need to check with this plugin:

• How to transform your daily routines into Jira checklists
• How to automate task creation: set up once and free your time for other work or a coffee break :)
  How to start initial task creation and stop recurrence for a specific pediod.
• How to pre-fill epic, labels and sprint custom fields.
• How to monitor your team’s progress with a one-page report with submission status, assignee, reporter and date details. 

 

Who can use the add-on: managers and agile teams who need to perform repetitive tasks.

2. Smart Jira Forms

The next tool is Smart Jira Forms. It also allows the creation of forms for all projects manually or automatically. But the setting has some differences.

What differs it? Here are a few options:

• An interactive way to create a form with drag and drop builder – add any required field with a few moves
• Use conditional logic to build smart forms/checklists that can display or hide fields, ensuring that teams receive the data they require

 

Additional reasons to try the plugin:

• Create multiple forms attached to a single ticket to manage complex processes
• Create a Jira issue based on the submitted forms
• Get the direct URL to share the created form with any person, even outside your company (clients, partners, etc.)

Who can use the add-on: any Jira team internally or externally if they need to share forms with required parties out of Jira.

3. Business Process Manager

Business Process Manager (BPM) is one more solution to arrange your workflow process automation in Jira. It’s a complex tool where you can automate business processes, not just individual tasks.

What additional possibilities you’ll get:

• Create a process template with a variety of steps (Jira issues) that includes forms and conditional logic
• Add an approval step with conditions if you need some user or group to submit some process; get an email on each approve/reject
• Include a blocker, so no issue after that point can be created until the tasks before aren’t completed
• Get real-time insights to keep an eye on your workflow, and experiment with data tied to issue fields using JQL, API, and automation.

 

Who can use the add-on: managers and large teams who want to standardize processes and run them automatically so that a single person doesn’t control the creation of tasks.

Comparison of process management tools in Jira

Here is a comparison table of the three add-ons described above for those who want to get the difference quickly.

	Recurring Checklists and Report	Smart Jira Forms	Business Process Manager
What problem the add-on solves	Help managers and Agile teams to manage repetitive tasks	Collect data from Jira users and external customers	Automation and standardization of business processes in Jira, such as onboarding, offboarding, vacation request, etc.
Key differences	- Setting up a schedule for launching checklists as separate tasks - Prefill custom fields - One-page report, which shows the status of the task for the responsible person	- Share the form with external users - Create a Jira issue based on the submitted forms - All information is stored in Jira, we don’t store anything on our server	- Build process template to standardize procedures - You don`t need administrator access to improve the process template - There are no limits to automation
Functionality	- Checklist builder (truncated functionality, compared to forms builder) - Assignee - Schedule (recurring) - Run Now/Enable - Detailed report App Documentation	- Forms builder - Form logic - Automatic addition to newly created tasks - Adding a form to the support portal and displaying for customers App Documentation	- Forms builder - Form logic - Multi assignees - Scheduler - Approver step - Issue blocker - Task transition - Report on processes - Combine processes with automation App Documentation

Takeaway

All three tools aim to simplify process management and reduce time spent on recurring tasks in Jira. Depending on your team preferences and workflow organization, you can choose the one that fits your needs best. If you’re unsure about your choice, there is a 30-days free trial for

• BPM
• Recurring Checklists and Report
• Smart Jira Forms
  So you can check if it is a good option for you.