JIRA 2 Feedback and Improvements

(from Mike Roberts at Thoughtworks)

mike_b_roberts: hello?
bookmarkman_99: hey
bookmarkman_99: how goes it? just about to crash
mike_b_roberts: pretty good, thanks - had a really quick q and saw you just
posted to j-users. Was wondering if Jira 2 would allow you to select
multiple issue types in a filter (Jira 1 currently just has a drop-down for
issue type) - I'll email you if you want to go to bed!
mike_b_roberts: btw, Jira 2 is going to solve a whole heap of problems round
here! )
bookmarkman_99: heh - uhm, actually it doesn't yet
mike_b_roberts: , even
bookmarkman_99: but with the new query system, there's no reason it couldn't

bookmarkman_99: (ie performance degradation would be v. small)
mike_b_roberts: Shall I add it to jira.atlassian?
bookmarkman_99: yep - sounds like a good idea
bookmarkman_99: what sort of problems?
mike_b_roberts: k - cool, thanks.
mike_b_roberts: Custome fields, mostly
mike_b_roberts: We are using Jira for some weird stuff here along the lines
of project management
bookmarkman_99: right - well, I'd really love if you could try out the EAPs
and let me know if the custom fields do what you want
bookmarkman_99: now is the time to chime up for features while the hood is
open!
mike_b_roberts: e.g. A customer enters an issue for a new project they
want, rather than just a new feature
bookmarkman_99: one issue per project?
mike_b_roberts: I'm gonna try. Loads of things on at the moment. I tried EAP
1 but got hit by the new issues bug, but think that got fixed.
bookmarkman_99: now that is a strange idea
mike_b_roberts: Yeah - we support about 50 different projects in this group
(some of them are tiny)
bookmarkman_99: right - yep, fixed - and EAP 2 is even prettier, especially
the new filtering / issue nav UI is much better
mike_b_roberts: btw, I think you should add 'unpriotitised' as a default
priority and 'story' as a default task type.
bookmarkman_99: hehe default!
bookmarkman_99: now THAT is a good idea
bookmarkman_99: all constants should have a default choice
mike_b_roberts: Default project in 'new issue' would be good too.
bookmarkman_99: well, that's always the last project you 'touched' -
magicness
mike_b_roberts: Ah, a default default then.
mike_b_roberts: (In case this is their first visit)
bookmarkman_99: but thep riority is currently always the 'middle one'
mike_b_roberts: Ah, OK.
bookmarkman_99: issue type is always the top one
mike_b_roberts: I just being anal.
bookmarkman_99: but defaults is a good idea, I can see people using that -
and we can do it very simply in the UI
mike_b_roberts: (/me downloads EAP 2...)
mike_b_roberts: So when do yo the .Net port?!
bookmarkman_99: the what?
mike_b_roberts: heh
mike_b_roberts: BTW, you know the other download from here the other day?
Thats for a team that are trying actually integrating Jira into a projcet
bookmarkman_99: really? wow - how? having any problems?
mike_b_roberts: There was a project needing some specific issue management
based on some other stuff.
mike_b_roberts: Basically they have a Service grabbing stuff out of an
Oracle DB and are creating issues through the API.
mike_b_roberts: Biggest problem they are having is the API itself - I think
they'd either like more documentation, or to try a SOAP API
bookmarkman_99: ahh ok - well, depending on when their project is due - they
should use 2, it's a much nicer API
mike_b_roberts: Any chance of a source download?
bookmarkman_99: for 2? Uhm - it's still got a lot of debug / cruft in there
mike_b_roberts: And?
mike_b_roberts: s'ok, I understand if you don't want it let out
mike_b_roberts: A Javadoc dump for the API at least would be useful though
bookmarkman_99: maybe wih release 3 when we get a few more bugs ironed out,
and the email notification stuff done (one of the last 'majors')
mike_b_roberts: Yeah, Jira 'spam' is a bit of an issue here.
bookmarkman_99: hehe, we're fixing that - and in style true to atlassian
form, making it 100x better than anywhere else
bookmarkman_99: (it's seriously funky shit
mike_b_roberts: Joe and Paul H were singing the praises of your CRM App,
btw. Scott showed them in belgium and they were well impressed
bookmarkman_99: hehe now THAT is some seriously funky shit g we have a lot
of 'cool stuff' still to come, don't worry about that
mike_b_roberts: So are you going to sell the CRM stuff?
bookmarkman_99: possibly - it's a much harder 'sale'
mike_b_roberts: yeah, it wouldn't be something we want here, I guess
bookmarkman_99: I think Confluence will be our next 'released' app, and that
you guys will cream for - it's right up the XP alley
mike_b_roberts: ?
bookmarkman_99: hrm... it's hard to describe, you have to see it - it's like
an online collaborative free form environment, part blog, part wiki - you
can create new 'spaces' (like a wiki in itself) rapidly and bring other
group members in to collaborate in them.
mike_b_roberts: Ah, OK. I tried snip-snap - it didn't pass the 10 minute
test for me
bookmarkman_99: of course you can let outside people just 'view' - I think
it will be really good for companies to document a software process, manage
projects, share information with customers / clients
bookmarkman_99: why's that? it's pretty cool
bookmarkman_99: of course - it will be integrate with JIRA (two way)
mike_b_roberts: Seemed over complex to me. I love moin moin coz its so
simple
bookmarkman_99: moin moin is simpler? in which way?
mike_b_roberts: You click 'edit' and type. Can't remember now. Chris and
were looking at it - perhaps we were just having one of those days...
bookmarkman_99: right - well, I'll make sure to keep simplicity high on the
list (it always is)
mike_b_roberts: (/me creates a project)
mike_b_roberts: oooooh - nice bew project admin browser.
bookmarkman_99: yah, much cleaner
bookmarkman_99: and you no longer lose your navigation if you have lots of
versions / components
mike_b_roberts: btw, we really need to eb able to assign 'per-project
admins' here
bookmarkman_99: yah, it's on the 2 list
bookmarkman_99: anyway, I'm crashing but I'll leave this on - feel free to
dump any thoughts, worries, UI improvements (checkout the new issue nav,
shared filters etc - I still think it's not 'quite' right even if it's much
more obvious than the last one)
bookmarkman_99: to this window or email
mike_b_roberts: I still reckon the version boxes look a bit ugly compared
with everythin else (on 'new issue page 2')
bookmarkman_99: the fix / affects versions select boxes? hard to make them
prettier
mike_b_roberts: Yeah. I reckon it should highlight 'none' and 'unknown'
maybe. And if there aren't any released versions in the project, there
should be the 'Released versions' line in the box
bookmarkman_99: right - maybe, all good little tweaks - keep 'em coming, I'm
bailing - nite mate (or morning
mike_b_roberts: heh - see ya

So, here's what else I thought of. Just my thoughts, so when I say
'should', its just my opinion, right?! And its a bit verbose, but
hopefully it will be representative of my immediate emotions. Which is
important when you're selling this thing?!

That whole version thing - the affected and fix for should look more similar
to each other, affected version should also have 'unknown' at the top, and
both boxes should have 'unknown' highlighted by default. Most users (here at
least) don't care about versions. We can always figure that out later
anyway, and they just get confused.

While I think about it, component is the same. As a user, I don't know
necassarily how your components work. Perhaps change 'none' to 'unknown', or
at least highlight 'none'.

Also, if my project doesn't have versions and/or components, I don't care
about them on the new issue screen, so why not either (a) don't show them or
(b) show them disabled? Helps with the whole '10 minute test'

Environment should be below 'description'. We hardly every use it.

Perhaps, in fact, you should split page 2 - Page 2a is the mandatory fields,
you then have 2 submit buttons, one takes you to page 2b where you can add
optional fields, and the other just creates the issue there and then. I'd
like that a lot.

Oooh, how about rich text box for description?

OK, created my issue - nice new issue page! Ah, but my status is just a
grey box with a dot in it - that ain't intuitive!

Apart from that, it looks nice! Getting rid of all those buttons was a good
idea. While I think of it - watching. Here's a story: 'As a user I want to
be able to configure my profile such that I can choose whether I
automatically watch issues or not when I create them' and 'As a Jira
administrator, I want to be able to be able to configure a default behaviour
for [the previous story] when a user hasn't specified a preference'

BUG! Tried to create another issue - this time I left the component as
'None', and its giving me a big pink bar saying 'Component IDs cannot be
less than zero'.

Another bug - When I browse the project, only 'No component' is listed on
the left hand side of the 'open issues' page, yet the 2 issues I created are
both in a specified component, so when I click the component link nothing
appears. (My extracted XML is at the end of this email)

Another bug - extract xml is hanging when I want to extract to browser
rather than file.

So now to the new 'Find Issues stuff'. First thing - I hadn't set up
indexing, so I went and did that, then hit 'find issues' again, but got the
same page ... because it was cached. We get this a lot - is there anything
more you could do to stop IE caching?

Again, the 'fix for' box problem. I really don't like the whole
'sub-listing' thing in the select box. There has to be a better way.

Why is 'Edit' and 'New' a different pane on the tab, when effectively they
are the same thing? It doesn't seem to fit when the other things on the tab
('View' and 'All') are so different.

Generally - I like having more filter fields in terms of power, but this
screen is getting increasing difficult for new users to comprehend. Any
chance we can break this up a bit?

Bug! 'Reported by' set to 'Any User', clicked 'View >>', got message 'Could
not find username: asdas' ! When I clicked something else, then back to Any
User, and view again, this went away.

Right, so I've got a list of issues now, and status is a little sqaure with
a dot it in again - what gives?

Also, priority column is so narrow, all the title says is 'Pr' - is this a
feature?

OK, I'm going to save this filter now (that's a lot nicer than V1) - the
submit button says 'Save As' - I think 'Save' is fine. 'Save as' implies (to
me) that another dialog is going to appear. And sure enough, you're using
'Save as' for a rename option on the 'view' tab' (which makes sense)

So I'm viewing the filter now, and I get more columns. Any reason why you
have more columns here?

I click a column to re-order and I get 'Modified since loading' as a message

• what does that mean? The data changed? Ah, I see, I have a 'Save' link now
  so it means the filter specification has changed (I reordered), which means
  you are saving sort orders. Nice. But not obvious. Are we going to get
  column picking? And can you add an option to generate a URL for any given
  filter (so I can link to reports from an intranet site)?

Looking at 'Manage fiilters' - this is a private filter, so we can't share
yet?

So back to the Issue view page.

Bug! I click 'Watch it' and get 'Issue does not exist'. I haven't got SMTP
turned on - is this the problem? And if I have SMTP turned off should I even
have that option? (which brings into to play a whole 'service-dependent UI
options' thing which we better not go near! )

OK, lets go play with custom fields. Mmmm - I can add 'Select lists' . Very
nice! And you have default options! Why are 'Edit' and 'Edit options'
different pages?

Other things - moving issues between projects would be good.

OK, I need to go and do some work now. Overall, there's a load of good new
things in Jira 2, but I've come across a few bugs. I look forward to trying
out later versions!

Cheers,

Mike