What do organizations Cisco, Pfizer and Walmart all have in common? Despite having vastly different products, services, organizational goals, team structures, and customers, each of these businesses runs on Atlassian’s Jira platform.
Originally designed to help software developers with issue tracking, Jira has evolved to support task management, project management, agile management, and reporting and analytics functions for all types of teams at an organization. Users range from HR and finance teams to marketing and IT operations professionals, in addition to the software developers Jira was initially built to serve.
Today, approximately 65,000 different companies use Jira for its various functions — and it’s all made possible due to the platform's flexible nature and customizable features. By applying customizations to project workflows, filters, notifications and more, organizations across industries and company sizes can ensure efficient cross-collaboration on one central tool, all while empowering individual teams to operate according to their unique objectives and working styles.
Whether your organization is considering using Jira, onboarding more teams to the platform or simply looking to make the most of its features, customizations are one way to maximize its benefits. Here are six popular customizable Jira features that offer tailored solutions to enhance use of the platform for any type of team.
Six Customizable Features in Jira
- Dashboards: Jira dashboards are the first information users see when they log into Jira. Dashboards quickly display a project or team's progress, by showing gadgets to share projects, assignments and achievements. Users can customize dashboard gadgets to display only the information most important to their team, such as issue status, sprint progress, or project health, which makes asynchronous work across an organization easy and efficient.
- Workflows: Jira workflows map out the steps an issue takes during its life cycle in Jira. Default workflows include “to do,” “in progress” and “done,” but for many organizations and teams, work is much more complex. For instance, marketing teams may need assets approved before sending their deliverables to sales teams. In this case, users can customize transitions, such as adding a “sent to review” step into their workflow. Custom workflows allow teams to accurately track project statuses, so every team member is up-to-date on what stage an issue or project is in.
- Fields: Users can build custom fields in Jira to convey specific information about a project or task. Options for custom fields include dates, numbers, lists and more. By customizing this feature, users can capture all the relevant information about an issue, add details specific to their team needs, and draw more specialized filtered search results. This customization also comes in handy when teams pull reports — users can collect and reference when an issue was resolved, by whom, and other project categories associated with the work.
- Screens: Jira screens display all the different fields users need to fill out when they create or edit an issue. Using screens, teammates can control what fields users see during issue operations, organize the display order, or split groups of fields into multiple groups. Users can customize these screens to only show the fields that are relevant to their team and project, ensuring that teams only gather the knowledge they need to do their work, and aren’t overloaded with unnecessary information.
- Filters: Custom filters help users search for specific issues or projects in Jira. Users can save and reuse filters, which is helpful for teams needing to locate and prioritize specific issues based on criteria such as priority or due date. A Jira administrator can simply navigate to their board and select “manage custom filters” to create, edit or delete these customizations.
- Notifications: Jira generates notifications when issues or projects undergo changes, informing teams of updates in real time and signaling to collaborators it’s time to complete their work. Notifications are great for keeping projects in-progress, but not every team member needs to be notified for each issue update. Customized notifications settings ensure the right person handles the next step in the workflow, without overwhelming project members.
Choose the Right Customizations for Your Organization with an Atlassian Platinum Solutions Partner
With all the customizations available in Jira, it can be difficult to choose which ones to implement, especially if multiple different teams within one organization are using the platform. While customizations build efficiency into daily work, enlisting too many can add unnecessary complexity and cloud visibility across issues and projects. As organizations evolve, it’s important for teams to continually evaluate their customizations to make sure they still align with their flow of work.
As an Atlassian Platinum Solutions Partner, Contegix is specialized in assisting organizations with customizing their Jira platform. Contegix experts have used years of insight to build dedicated solutions to support teams navigating this process, from tutorial guides on getting started with Jira to newly developed blueprints for individual teams to follow during their implementation process.
Contegix offers continued monitoring services for teams that have already enlisted Jira customizations, and can help organizations identify areas for improvement and administer solutions to build efficient and effective custom solutions.
Learn more about how Contegix can assist teams with building custom solutions in Jira.