Has anyone used the 'Links Hierarchy Structure' plugin? Does it work?

Donncha Daly November 13, 2012

Hi,

I downloaded the 'Links Hierarchy Structure' plugin v1.1.0. When I open the 'Link Hierarchy' tab, I get amessage that something is loading and thats it, it doesn't seem to work.

Anyone have experience with this plugin? Did it work for you and was it good?

Any help appreciated.

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Kinto Soft
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November 17, 2012

The "loading" errors have been improved in the latest 1.1.1 version by:

  • Providing detailed error about why issues are not fully loaded.
  • Dealing with different urls on the browser and the one defined on JIRA (base url). Now, the plugin can work without problems if they are not just the same.

The user below provides some useful information about how the plugin works and what you can expect:

https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/107411/links-plugin-not-showing-sub-tasks-properly

Apologies for the inconveniences.

Pablo.

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Kinto Soft
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February 4, 2013

Also we'd like to be able to export it as a document. Excel would be a good way, but it could be Word, it could even be a PDF.

Export to excel is supported in the 1.9.0 version. It exports into two layouts: hierachical (close to the structure is displayed by the plugin) and list. Project Version Structure reports can also be exported.

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Kinto Soft
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January 26, 2013

Is there a lighter weight approach that you can take?

That is just what you will fin the in the 1.8.0 version, The report has been redesigned. Simply, It has not sense visualize such reports by using hierarchical structures. Have a look at the new version:

https://dq1dnt4af4eyy.cloudfront.net/files/com.docminer.jira.issue-links/screenshots/3cc27494-1901-4f87-9e62-57e31b8d8aec.png

Now it's a good time to suggest what graphs/charts would you like to see implemented. I'll put the focus on data like due date, estimated/work logs, ect trying to provide a useful overview of the global progress/status of any version.

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Kinto Soft
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January 22, 2013

@Andrew, please download the 1.7.5 version. It supports tool tips for JIRA issues and also a new layout grouping link types:

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Kinto Soft
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January 22, 2013

@Andrew,

Please, download the 1.7.1 version. It sould render the structure faster.

I'm corious. If it gets fully loaded, might you tell me how much nodes are displayed (you can see the total at the top right os the plug-in view)

Thanks,

Pablo.

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Kinto Soft
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January 21, 2013

@Andrew, I forget to mention it: please, let me know if found some filter configuration improving the performace ;)

As sometimes the structure is reloaded from the server, a trick would be setting the depth to 1 to ensure that it does not take many time to load and then apply the other filters, and finally increase the depth to 2 or 5 again.

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Kinto Soft
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January 21, 2013

Yep, that is just the problem. Getting some few issues from the server and display them on a hierarchical structure is not difficutl, but when you try to get the real full structure from the server in order to be rendered and expanded at once....

Did you tried by appliying some filters? Like setting the depth to 2 it could help. Maybe you might also want to unchek the resolved filter to see only the pending issues, or in the version filter uncheck any other exixting version, even the "unversioned" issues.

Anyway, I've some performance and other improvements in mind which will be released soon.

Regarding the:

Also we'd like to be able to export it as a document. Excel would be a good way, but it could be Word, it could even be a PDF.

Excel would be a good choice. I'll implement it.

Another thing that would be very desireable would be to be able to run the report at an individual Sprint level in addition to at a Release (Version) level.

Yes, it was the next natural step. I'll implement a new filter "sprint" and also a new report.

Pablo.

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Andy Ukasick January 21, 2013

Hi Pablo,

I tried out 1.7 and while I really like that you're working on providing that report, I ran into some problems. At a release (version) level we can have many hundreds of issues. When I went to run the report is seemed to choke on the quantity and took a very long time before it even started to render. I was using Firefox and I was getting messages about scrits taking to long and do I want to stop them. Ultimately it rendered everything on top of itself.

Is there a lighter weight approach that you can take? Also we'd like to be able to export it as a document. Excel would be a good way, but it could be Word, it could even be a PDF.

Another thing that would be very desireable would be to be able to run the report at an individual Sprint level in addition to at a Release (Version) level. So yes, we'd definitely want that. :-)

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Kinto Soft
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January 21, 2013

Hi Andrew,

The just released 1.7 versions provides full support for project versions (filters on the graph + new project report). I'm thinking about to extend such reports to GreenHopper Sprints and build full Sprint Hierarchical Structures. Not sure whether it worths developing. Any feedback would be very appreciate.

Pablo

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Andy Ukasick January 20, 2013

Links Explorer does not show Epic/Story relationships. That's a deal breaker for me on that one. It has no GreenHopper support.

The Links Heirarchy plugin does support GreenHopper and the Epic/Story relationships.

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Kinto Soft
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January 16, 2013

Both plug-ins looks very similar at very high level, but have different goals. Links Hierarchy Structure (LHS) is targeted for large structures, so it loads the full structure at the begining avoiding users to click and click and click and click and click again and so on to see something useful. Everytime that an user needs to do click is money that your company loses.

On the other hand, if the structure is large, LSH provide many filters allowing users to prune useless branches and it keeps users informed about the impact of the applied filters on each issue. This is very important in order to work with confidence. Incomplete information is at least as worse as bad data. If users cannot be sure about what they are seeing, it's a pain for them.

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Michael Blake January 16, 2013

We were going to use Links Hierarchy Structure plugin, but have decided to use Links Explorer( https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.otpl.jira.plugins.lxp ). They have expanded the page on the issue and do not have font size differences. The issue also prints nicely.

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Andy Ukasick December 10, 2012

I am using 1.1.15 with JIRA 5.1.7 and GreenHopper 6.0.7

It seems to work fine, however, when upgrading to GreenHopper 6.0.8 the Plan view of the Rapid board does not render with the Hierarchy plugin installed. Perhaps 1.2.0 will fix that.

I wish this plugin provided the reports that used to be available in the old "Links Hierarchy Reports" plugin that was provided by Atlassian but which seems to no longer be supported. I don't think I would hesitate to buy it if it did. Atlassian documentation used to direct GreenHopper users to install the plugin, then they just inexplicably dropped support and left thousands of customers hanging.

Kinto Soft
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December 10, 2012

when upgrading to GreenHopper 6.0.8 the Plan view of the Rapid board does not render with the Hierarchy plugin installed. Perhaps 1.2.0 will fix that.

The 1.2.0 version supports GreenHoper Epic labels. Those labels are internally converted into issue links on the fly by the plugin (even Epic labels are implemented as system links, Atlassian said). I'll look at the Rapid Board issue, at the moment I don't guess how the plugin can produce this behaviour.

I wish this plugin provided the reports that used to be available in the old "Links Hierarchy Reports" plugin that was provided by Atlassian but which seems to no longer be supported.

Honestly, it is not in the inmediate roadmap, at least until I know a bit more about the Atlassian's future plans about Greenhopper reports. I saw the Atlassian plugín is not longer supported, but that does mean they are not working (or will not work) on an alternative. And if I add such feature and Atlassian too, it would have a big impact on users perception as my plugin like an Atlassian competitor. And it would not be good for my plugin.


0 votes
Nancy Belser November 16, 2012

I have the same problem. I am using Jira 5.1.6 with the latest version of the plugin. It says it is loading but it never finishes.

Nancy Belser November 18, 2012

I am using the new version (1.1.1) and it now displays fine when I have a small amount of issues linked together but crashes on the issue that is linked to 129 other issues.

https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/107741/links-hierarchy-structure-plugin-hangs-the-browser-when-trying-to-display-issues-with-lots-of-links

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Theinvisibleman
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November 13, 2012

You might want to first check the compatibility of the plugin with your JIRA version

Donncha Daly November 13, 2012

The marketplace page says that v.1.1.0 is compatible with v.5.0-v.5.2 of JIRA. I have 5.2

Theinvisibleman
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
November 13, 2012

Is there any errors shown during the loading? Could you try disabling and re-enabling it? If all else fails, you might want to contact the vendor of the plugin for support

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