Jira Dashboards in Confluence Going Where The Leaders Are

https://www.oldstreetsolutions.com/jira-dashboards-in-confluence

If you manage teams in Jira, Jira dashboards are at the heart of everything you do. That’s why you should consider making dashboards in Confluence, too.
But you can’t make a Jira dashboard in Confluence… can you?
Let’s say you’re a software team practicing Scrum software development. Your Scrum Masters use Jira dashboards for sprint planning, daily standups, demos of work completed in sprints, retros, and reporting to leadership.
The main thing your leaders want to know is whether there are any impediments, i.e. anything blocked or at risk that would require them to allocate extra resources or address a production problem. But senior managers don’t normally work in Jira, and yet they need to see Jira reports to understand these impediments. Often, where you will find those executives is Confluence. So, to make sure they know what the Jira teams are doing, you can recreate your Jira dashboards in Confluence.
Because Jira and Confluence are both Atlassian tools, they’re super-easy to integrate so that you can report on Jira issues on Confluence pages. This enables you to recreate your dashboards on a Confluence page. You can use preconfigured native chart macros like Sprint Health, Sprint Burndown, and Average Age of Issues.
And you can use Custom Jira Charts for Confluence for everything else you’d like to show. Custom Jira Charts for Confluence is the mirror image sister app of Custom Charts for Jira, which enables users to build from scratch or a template any kind of chart they like out of their Jira data.
What’s particularly useful is that you can do it right there on the Confluence page, rather than in a separate platform.
Your VPs and directors might want to keep these Confluence dashboards open on one monitor as an information radiator, so they can continuously monitor things like sprint health and at-risk projects across all teams in real time. Then they can make sure, for example, that if a certain team is behind, that team needs to be left alone.
Using Confluence for better data storytelling
Some people who do reporting forget that it’s not enough to show your audience a bunch of pretty bar charts without any context or explanation.
Once you’re done with the data visualization, the charts themselves, the next step is data storytelling, crafting a narrative that those charts demonstrate.
One of our customers started making Jira dashboards on Confluence pages, and then they realized they could use Confluence to make better, more detailed data stories.
So they started making “Updates from the Scrum Master” and “Sprint Goals” pages in Confluence, using the project templates, to provide an explanation for what is going on in the charts.
For example, a 2D stacked bar chart built with Custom Jira Charts for Confluence can spotlight items that are at risk or may not be in progress yet, and the Updates from the Scrum Master notes can explain why the team is so far behind on them.
This customer started to prefer reporting in Confluence because there’s no native way of embedding a Confluence page like the “Updates” ones in a Jira dashboard.
But they eventually found a way to do it with Amazon Web Services, and now their Jira teams have the same level of clarity about their reports.

5 Lessons For Agile Planning in Jira

https://www.oldstreetsolutions.com/jira-dashboards-for-planning
In this episode, we will be discussing five important lessons for agile planning in Jira, and some tips on how to improve planning in the platform.
Planning in native Jira can be challenging, and can lead to issues and confusion, as we experienced in my previous company. However, better planning can make all the difference, and digital whiteboard tools for Jira, as well as Jira dashboards, can help to streamline the process.
To get better at agile planning, it's important to shift from a "waterfall" mindset to an agile one. This means planning as you go, instead of trying to plan everything up front.
Unfortunately, my previous company struggled with this mindset shift.
Luckily, Jira dashboards and Custom Charts for Jira can be excellent tools for planning as you go. However, it's important to start by making and assigning Jira issues and to use Confluence or a Jira whiteboard tool to create your Work Breakdown Structure and get your project off the ground.
To summarize, here are the five lessons for agile planning in Jira:
As you plan your agile projects in Jira, keep in mind these core lessons that we learned at our former company. They can help you to streamline your agile planning process and make it more efficient:
Lesson 1: Remember that you're an agile team, not a waterfall team. Avoid documenting every requirement at the outset, as requirements tend to change. Agile documentation should be just good enough and produced just in time.
Lesson 2: Capture plans digitally. Make sure your plans are captured digitally, even if you start them on physical whiteboards so that everyone working in Jira can access them.
Lesson 3: Make plans for the platform you're working in. If you're using Jira and Confluence, make your plans in Jira and Confluence. You could also install a digital whiteboards tool like Miro or Agile Planning Boards.
Lesson 4: Build a Work Breakdown Structure. Break down big and complex projects into manageable chunks, and organize them in Jira with initiatives, epics, stories, and sub-tasks.
Lesson 5: Use retrospectives to plan better next time. Review your team's performance and project progress during the sprint retrospective, and use the insights to improve your next planning session.
We hope that these tips will help you with your agile planning in Jira.
Thank you for tuning in to our podcast today.

What the End of New Server App Sales Means for Custom Charts

https://www.oldstreetsolutions.com/end-jira-server-app-sales/

On February 15 2023, Atlassian shut down app sales for existing Atlassian Server licenses. It means that if you use Jira Server or Confluence Server, you won’t be able to buy any new apps from the Atlassian Marketplace after that date.

If you’re on Jira or Confluence Server and you’re using Custom Charts for Jira or Custom Jira Charts for Confluence, you probably have questions. If you’re on Server and looking to buy Custom Charts, you probably have questions too.

Let’s see if we can answer them all.

1. I’m an existing Custom Charts for Jira/Confluence Server customer. Will the end of the new Server app sales affect me?

No, it won’t. You won’t be impacted in any way by the February 15 2023 date. We will continue to support Custom Charts for Jira and Confluence on Server licenses until the support for Server and Server apps ends as a whole on February 15, 2024.

You can also renew maintenance for your Custom Charts Server license at any time in 2023. However, bear in mind that your renewal will be pro-rated to match the February 15 2024 date (go to question 3 for more on this).

2. Wait. What’s going to change on February 15, 2024?

This is the day Atlassian Server kicks the bucket. After this date, Atlassian and Atlassian Marketplace Partners (like us) will no longer provide security updates, bug fixes, or technical support for any issues, including critical vulnerabilities.

In other words, Old Street won’t be able to provide any support or updates for Custom Charts on Jira or Confluence Server after February 15 2024.

3. What about Custom Charts maintenance renewals in 2023?

If your Custom Charts Server license is up for maintenance renewal sometime in 2023, that’s fine, you can still renew it. However, the renewal will only go up to February 15 2024 and the price will be adjusted on a pro-rata basis to reflect this. In other words, if you renew on August 15, 2023, you’ll only pay for 6 months of maintenance.

Making Sure Your E signatures Are Legal Worldwide Confluence

https://www.oldstreetsolutions.com/esignature-legality-worldwide

Jira Reports for Sales Teams Working in Confluence

https://www.oldstreetsolutions.com/jira-reports-for-sales-teams

Increasing numbers of sales teams are using Jira for sales management. Our partner Deviniti uses Jira Software as its customer relationship management platform, and there are some great features and templates for sales teams in Jira Work Management. That said, many sales teams stick with tried and true CRMs like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, and Hubspot, rather than Jira.

The sales team, perhaps more than any other, is the one that needs to know what’s going on in the rest of the organization. If they’re selling a product, they need to know what the product team is doing. If they’re selling a service, they need to know what the service management team is doing.

And with customers these days buying so many products as a service, they need to work closely with both. They’ll want eyes on the marketing team, too, who will be working on campaigns and materials that the sales team needs, and the HR team when hiring new salespeople.

The product team is most likely to be working in Jira Software on bug fixes, new features, and new releases. The service management/support team is likely to be working in Jira Service Management on request fulfillment, maintenance, and implementation projects. The marketing and HR teams could be working in Jira Software or Jira Work Management on campaigns and recruitment. And the best way of communicating all these teams’ progress is through Jira reports.

The problem is, if the sales team isn’t working in Jira, how can they see Jira reports? Easy. By looking at them in Confluence.

How sales can get eyes on Jira… in Confluence

The sales team is probably using Confluence in the way all the teams in your organization are using Confluence: it’s the company intranet and quite often a digital substitute for the office in these remote, globally distributed times. The sales team may also use Confluence to produce sales materials or make and manage sales contracts.

But what the sales team might not know is that they can also use Confluence for reporting on Jira data. The fact that Jira and Confluence are both Atlassian products means they’re easily integrated, and Confluence comes with a Jira charts macro that lets you make a small handful of charts and graphs on a Confluence page. If your Jira and Confluence cloud instances have the same URL, you can also add a bunch of other preconfigured reports, e.g. sprint health and sprint burndown.

Unfortunately, the native capabilities are basically useless if the sales team doesn’t have access to Jira, which, if they’re not working in it, they probably don’t. The out-of-the-box charts will simply be blank when the sales team views the page.

With the Atlassian Marketplace app Custom Jira Charts for Confluence, this problem is no longer. Custom Charts is a macro that lets you load Jira reports onto a Confluence page using a Jira user’s permissions; this allows the sales team to see what the Jira teams are up to without having to set foot in Jira.

Moreover, Custom Jira Charts for Confluence comes with tons more visualization options, from different charts to different colors and labels. You can’t do much of anything with the native reports apart from, urm, change the width. But with Custom Charts you could make a 2D stacked bar chart that’s colored, ordered, and labeled however you want.

To learn more about Jira Reports for Sales Teams Working in Confluence, please follow the links below:

Collaborating and Sharing in Confluence: The Basics

What is Confluence?

Confluence is a place where employees can post articles, reports, meeting notes, to-do lists, diagrams, and anything else they might need to share with their workmates. And like any wiki, you can connect related pages together using internal links, making the content easy to explore.

Think of Confluence as four things:

A knowledge base. You can document processes, answer FAQs, and post policy and best practice information for your employees.

A workspace. You can create plans, requirements, and specs, draft blog articles for a website, communicate progress on projects, and talk to your colleagues by replying to comments and mentioning them.

An intranet. You can engage your employees with internal blogs and company updates.

A filing cabinet. Confluence can be used to store articles, reports, specs, contracts, and procedural documents, even ones that are no longer being actively used or referred to.

All kinds of teams use Confluence, from marketing to Hr to legal. We like it, we use it ourselves, and we think it’s pretty darn intuitive. Well, most of the time. That said, until Elon Musk is able to stitch computers into our brains, no newbie can log into Confluence and know instantly what to do with it. Therefore, let’s run through some basics.

Hosting

Confluence is available in three forms: Cloud, Data Center, and Server. Cloud and servers are relatively easy to understand.

Confluence Server is installed on your own hardware and you customize the setup how you like. If you have strict data governance requirements, don’t quite trust the cloud yet, and don’t mind the complexity and risk of hosting yourselves, you’ll probably be considering Server.

What about Data Centers?

Well, Data Center is still self-hosted, server-based software.

But Confluence Server is hosted on a single server, whereas Confluence Data Center is hosted on multiple. These extra servers boost the security and performance of your instance. If one goes down, all users are directed to whichever one/s is still standing.

And it distributes user traffic among the servers too, so if 10,000 users sign in to Confluence at once, half will go to one server and a half to another, keeping everything from slowing down too much.

In effect, Data Center is faster, stronger, and better than Server.

But it still isn’t Cloud. The cloud is really where you want to be and Confluence Cloud is where Atlassian is pouring all its efforts.

How to encourage Confluence adoption

Remember some people love their Word documents, their spreadsheets, and their Google Drives. And most don’t like change. Or, more accurately, they don’t like change when one, it’s being forced on them, and two, they don’t see why the new system is better.

If you’ve decided to implement Confluence for enterprise collaboration, you should introduce it to your employees slowly. Ease users into it. Let them play with this new platform and discover its benefits for themselves.

If you want to know more about this content follow the link in the description to connect with us.

Jira 9 is here, and Custom Charts works with it

Of course, whenever a new version comes out, the first thing on everyone’s mind is making sure their existing apps are compatible with it. Like, you know, their most valuable reporting tool, Custom Charts for Jira. :wink:

Well, folks, you can give your blood pressure a break. Custom Charts can now be installed in Jira 9.

Let’s dive into some other key benefits of Jira 9:

The automation rules you can create are made up of 3 parts:

Trigger: the automated process starts when a particular event happens, e.g. an issue is created or transitioned.

Conditions: these allow you to set criteria for when the rule applies, so that you can narrow its scope, e.g. your rule could apply only to bugs, or to issues of high priority.

Actions: a task such as editing an issue, sending out a notification, or creating a sub-task, which happens automatically after the trigger occurs and the conditions are met.

Example automation rule: when an issue is created (trigger) with its priority set to Highest (condition), a notification is sent to a team or team member (action).

Faster-loading Jira dashboards

This is one we’re particularly excited about here at Old Street, given how we’re superfans of the Jira dashboard.

With Jira 9, Atlassian have introduced lazy loading on a number of inline gadgets. Instead of every gadget loading by default, only the ones you’re looking at in the viewport will load. This will make dashboards load much faster.

Faster-loading Jira:

Other improvements make Jira issues load faster in Jira 9. Lazy loading has been added to attachment thumbnails in the issue view, and the way items in the Comments, History, Work Logs, and All tabs are displayed and organized has been optimized.

Issue transitions and statuses are now in the same menu:

Before Jira 9, the transitions available from the issue’s current status appeared as buttons on the issue, the rest in the Workflow dropdown menu. The current status was displayed in the issue details section.

Find out about other improvements that come with the Jira 9 release, and if you have any questions about Jira 9’s compatibility with Custom Charts for Jira, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our support team.

For more information follow the links below to connect with us:

Address: 28 City Rd, London EC1V 2NX, United Kingdom

Hours:

Monday8AM–11:30PM

Tuesday8AM–11:30PM

Wednesday8AM–11:30PM

Thursday8AM–11:30PM

Friday8AM–11:30PM

Saturday8AM–11:30PM

Sunday8–11:30AM 

Phone +44 7979 008162

5 Jira Service Management reports that all support teams will find useful

https://www.oldstreetsolutions.com/jira-service-management-guide

There are 5 reports that we think support teams ought to be looking at, which either come with Jira Service Management or can be generated using Custom Charts for Jira.

1) Customer satisfaction report – this lets you see your customer satisfaction (CSAT) ratings in chart form. The single CSAT report that comes with native JSM is a simple table with limited filtering options, but Custom Charts for Jira lets you make all kinds of charts and filter the data however you want.

2) Created vs Resolved Issues – this shows whether support teams are keeping up with the work that’s coming in. It comes out of the box as a basic line chart, but you can make a more customized version in Custom Charts for Jira.

3) Workload report – this helps see whether support agents are able to stay on stop of their workload, or may have too many issues to deal with. The native JSM pie chart does the job, but Custom Charts for Jira lets you customize the data and how it’s displayed. For example, you can show hide specific assignees or chart by original or remaining estimate instead of issue count.

4) Organizations report – this lets you see trends across your customer base, which companies are submitting the most tickets and what types of tickets they are. Most of the native reports don’t let you chart by Organization, so you’d need Custom Charts for Jira to get insights into where your requests are coming from.

5) SLA reports – these let you see whether you’re meeting the expectations stipulated in your service-level agreements.

There are a few SLA reports that come with JSM by default, and you can create your own using the JSM custom reports option. However, your only charting option is a basic line chart. With Custom Charts for Jira, you can make pie charts, table charts, and bar charts, even stacked bar charts.

In addition, with Custom Charts for Jira, you can build reports and charts out of your SLA data right there on the dashboard, whilst getting a lot more choice and control over how those charts appear. You can also calculate the averages of your SLA figures and filter them by assignee, request type, and other custom fields without writing a single line of Jira Query Language – which you can’t do natively.

4 SLA reports that you can create in Custom Charts for Jira are:

Average Time to First Response by Request Type

Time Remaining on a SLA by Assignee

Average Time to Resolution by Assignee

SLA Breached vs Not Breached

Do you want to know more about this? Follow the link in the description to read the complete article!

See you on the other side!

Using Jira Dashboard Reports to Prevent People from Bothering the Content Team

It’s an endless Easter here in Old Street because we constantly carry too many eggs in one basket.

With most of the content is written by the one and only Christopher Berry, there’s always an unavoidable wave of questions about what’s finished, reviewed, or in progress.

Our team actively collaborates in Jira and Confluence, which allow us to track activities end to end. But that’s not always the shortest path to a quick status check.

How we identified the origin of an upcoming issue:

Except for Mr. Berry, other team members got involved in content writing only recently. This change doubled the existing Jira issues and Confluence pages.

People were distributed around specific areas: product features, customer use cases, or ecosystem best practices. It often means they write in different spaces and even follow different workflows.

Slack was louder than usual.

Having a customized Jira dashboard for marketing has helped us improve our monthly sprint planning, tracking, and load. It positively impacts our performance by giving us essential cues for the team’s progress.

We released the first version of the Issue List gadget and macro not long ago and have since expanded its capabilities even further.

It was also the obvious choice for our content use case.

A comprehensive list that shows the type and status of our content items what more do we need!

As you see, Jira dashboards are not only for support team leads.

If you want to build some charts and dashboards yourself, and see how easy it is, have a go in our online Custom Charts playground and for more details please follow this link: https://www.oldstreetsolutions.com/jira-dashboard-content to read the full article, thank you!

Jira Issue List Now Available to All Custom Charts Users

What is the Issue List?

Issue List is a gadget and macro that comes with Custom Charts for Jira and Custom Jira Charts for Confluence. It allows users to generate a list of Jira issues on a Jira dashboard or Confluence page. It’s very similar to the out-of-the-box Filter Results gadget, but has some additional benefits, including:

The ability to dynamically filter Issue list using our Simple Search gadget or macro

Multiple options to choose from as the Source of Issue List, not just Saved Filters

Issue List is great for users who are looking to display a variety of information about their Jira issues all in one spot. Instead of leaving the dashboard and building the query using the Jira issue search, teams can see what’s most valuable to them in an easy-to-read list on their dashboard.

This list sets alongside the rest of your reporting, saving everyone the time and effort of going to multiple places to view their data.

Custom Charts for Jira is the most powerful and effective for reporting when users add all of our gadgets and macros to a dashboard or page.

Want to learn more?

Click the link in description to navigate to our documentation.

We’ll be adding more and more features to the Issue List in the future, so keep an eye out for updates on our Twitter!