Since workflows hasn't been added to next gen yet, what can I do to automate issue workflows with git? I'd like to set up a trigger so creating a commit automatically moves an issue into In Progress. It looks like the documentation I find online is for classic projects only and there isn't a way to do this at all for next gen? Super sad since this seems like a no brainer feature to include for a smooth transition from classic to next gen.
This looks like a cool update, but I wish there was a "convert to next gen" feature for existing agile projects. My project is years old, has thousands of issues, there's workflows, boards, custom scripts, custom issue types and god knows what else. I just don't see myself remaking this manually and moving all the issues just hoping it all works out.
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October 19, 2018 edited
@Jeff Loiselle I take it you’re using a kanban style of workflow?
When you are not using sprints, the right most column of your board is considered the end of the workflow. Issues in the right most column will automatically clear from your board after 14days. If you scroll to the bottom of your right most column, there is a link to take you to a list of all the issues that have been cleared from your board.
We will be adding in the ability for you to have more direct control over clearing / releasing issues from the board for those of you preferring a kanban.
The other method for removing issues from the board is when you are in sprint mode. The new next-gen boards allow you to turn sprint mode on/off at any time. When you hit complete sprint, it will then clear the issues from the board until you start another sprint, however note that it will then run in a more scrum-like manner, and return incompleted issues back into the backlog or the next planned sprint.
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October 19, 2018 edited
@Irena LamI’m glad you are interested in the ability we have with Classic projects to automate workflows based on git triggers. We haven’t yet built this into next-gen projects but will be doing so in the future. I can also say that we’ll be making these work with a wider range of tools, as we’ve also built better 3rd party extensibility into our dev status APIs.Our team is going to be really happy to hear you’re keen on having git triggered automations in next-gen.
When we do build them into next-gen, the setup of the automations will become a lot easier. To get an idea of how much easier the UI will become just go to the top right of the board “...” menu and click on manage rules. In the future you can expect us to add more rules and automations using this kind of UI that is more user friendly.
The smart commits you shared in the link are not automations. Rather, they allow a developer to transition an issue through a commit message, which saves them the step of going into the JIRA UI to move that issue through its workflow.
One thing you will notice with the new next-gen boards is that when you do include link issues and commits, you will see a dev status icon appear on the bottom left of the card.
Many customers, particularly team leads, tell us they really like this as they can glance at the status of cards on the board and quickly see if they are at the stage of create branch, commits or PR (open, declined or merged).
Next-gen and Classic projects are completely different in the underlying configuration architecture and so we do not currently have an automated way to migrate.
In any case, it would be best to try out the new next-gen project and see if you can do what you need it to do, and try it out with your team before making the move. If not it's not doing what you need it to do, please let us know so that we can improve and prioritise the right features for you.
Is it possible to have multiple boards for a next-gen project? That is to say, can one team work on one part of the workflow and then hand the issue off to another at the start of theirs?
We haven’t got multiple boards on next-gen projects so It’s not possible to partition the project’s workflow into multiple boards as you described. For now that is still something you’ll need to Classic projects and boards.
Right now with next-gen, you would have to flatten / merge back to a shared board view across the 2 teams with perhaps Team A taking the first set of columns, and then handing over to Team B for the latter.
We have built a simple automation feature into next-gen (go to the top right menu on the board) where you could setup a way to auto assign an issue when it moves from, say Column D to E, as a way to handover issues to people in the next team. It’s a whole lot easier to do this on a next-gen project than Classic. Have a chat to your team about this, as I know many agile teams prefer to encourage self organization and have the team pulls tickets themselves, rather than pre-assigning work.
Our goal is to make sure Jira can be easily adjusted to reflect anyway a team works, and so you can count on us coming forward with a solution for more customized ways of organising board views in next-gen.
Why are the default issue types and their fields so limited? I understand you want to allow flexibility, but this feels like starting from a blank slate. Do you expect "bug" to be an optional issue type that some people may not run into when creating software?
The UI is so polished, but the content, the essence, it feels empty and shiny.
@Jason Wong I'd love to use a next-gen project but am struggling to figure out the best way to review completed work, given the lack of a Sprint Report which appears to fill that need in the classic projects. I scrolled to the bottom of my right-most column as you recommended above but do not see a link to completed work. This is the only real concern I have about using next-gen projects right now, as it's pretty important to be able to look at what we've completed over past sprints.
Right now next-gen has just 2x templates (next-gen scrum and next-gen kanban), which limits our ability to cater to a wide variety of teams - some want a blank canvas, some want more structure. We've got some work to catchup with optimizing the templates, of which I would say there is demand for more variety from simple to advanced.
Many early adopters of next-gen projects have also expressed a wish for us to ship with more issue types enabled out of the box, so I do think you'll see us move in the direction you've suggested.
We're just been very careful not to turn on too many things quickly as it's harder to find the balance between simplicity and power (and with that, some added complexity) if we start from the complex end of the spectrum and work backwards by turning things off, so hope that explains why it's on the minimalist side right now.
Looking further forward, I can share with you that we also have plans to introduce templating, with the idea being that you can formulate your own defaults, save them as a template which can then be offered to your other teams when they go to create a project.
For Server, it's still TBD. As @Josh Frank posted on an earlier comment, the the Server team is investigating & learning from customer feedback at the moment to balance which elements would be most valuable in addition to performance, administrative control, & team productivity!
@Jason Wong I really appreciate your responsiveness. Actually, there are two differences in my display: 1) I'm not seeing "Looking for Done Issues" and 2) I don't see "+" symbols on each board below the last card. Is there anything I need to do to ensure I can review Done issues?
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October 22, 2018 edited
@Tucker Fross thanks for staying with me on this. I’m very keen to understand how you’re going so that we can do everything we can to make things easier to use / more intuitive.
I should have clarified whether you are using sprints. There are differences when you have sprints enabled/disabled that we still need to iron out on next-gen.
When you have sprints enabled:
The button “Looking for an older issue?” does not appear as it has been designed for dealing with kanban style continuous flow where completed work piles in the last "Done" column. Hence the current 14 day auto clearing logic. This will be upgraded with more direct control on how to clear / release issues from the board when working without sprints (in continuous flow).
In sprint mode, the clearing mechanism is different. All the issues stay on the board until you you hit the Complete sprint button, which then clears it for you to start a new sprint. You then go to the backlog to decide on which issues are in your next sprint and then hit start to bring issues onto the board.
The + button to add issues inline on the board has been disabled for sprints. Bringing items into the sprint can upset burndown / velocity / and often members of the team when bringing extra scope into a sprint. We do have this capability on our Classic boards where a double confirmation pops up to confirm that you want to add an issue to an active sprint. Some joke that we should make this a triple confirmation box ;) We will be bringing this to the next-gen boards soon as we understand that in instances like this, Jira just needs to get out of the way and do what you want it to do.
Back to your original request, we will be looking at improving the views into completed work, making it easier to access past sprints. Would you be interested in participating in some early user testing of solutions?
I'd like to mention that we will also be shipping integrations with CI/CD tools to give added visibility into deployments. We also recently brought in integrations with feature flag providers so you can see if a particular piece of code is live for customers. These kind of integrations are aimed to give more visibility into what happens to an issue after it is typically marked as done or cleared from a board.
Next-gen and Classic projects are completely different in the underlying configuration architecture and so we do not currently have an automated way to migrate.
If you want to know the manual steps to move, check out this comment by @Julien Femia in a previous comment - here.
In any case, it would be best to try out the new next-gen project and see if you can do what you need it to do, and try it out with your team before making the move. If not it's not doing what you need it to do, please let us know so that we can improve and prioritise the right features for you.
@Jason Wong Thank you for the response, the detail is very helpful. What is the best way for me to view completed tickets? I'd love to use next-gen but am worried about not being able to look back at when we released something (or even just go look at specs from old stories).
I'd be more than happy to participate in some user testing if possible.
Looking great! I would put the reports under features that you can turn on and off. All these reports are not part of the essentials of Scrum, being able to disable those, or choose which reports you want makes it easier to focus on what is important in development: get stuff done, instead of staring at reports.
What are the plans to migrate/upgrade a classic project to a next-gen project? We have too many tickets in our project for a single bulk change, so that's too bad. The risks are too high to just manually migrate this project to a next-gen board.
I started a new nextgen project, but there is no Features item under my project settings. I started the project for the roadmap tool, but am not sure why it's not showing up for me.
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