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Introduction and the Jira Atmosphere

1. Introduction and Administrator Responsibilities

Hello and welcome to Jira Administration. This course is designed to explain the main responsibilities of a Jira administrator and equip you with the skills to perform those activities inside your company's Jira instance. Before we get too far into the course, let's take a quick moment to review Jira terminology in case you need a refresher or you're familiar with similar tools but need to understand how things work in Jira. As the administrator, you manage the Jira instance as a whole, as well as create and help maintain Jira projects. A Jira project is like a container that holds Jira issues, which are your individual pieces of work. In Jira, these issues are categorized into issue types and are defined by a workflow associated with that issue type. Jira issues are assigned to users who are organized into groups and project roles within Jira and indicated as signees on an issue. Users can also be reporters of issues, which indicates they created the issue in the first place. And finally, the way projects' Issues screens, workflows, permissions, and notifications work are controlled by schemes that you set as the Jira administrator. We're going to cover all of that throughout this course. For now, let's look at Jira deployment options. There are three deployment options for Jira Cloud, which is hosted by Atlassian, and Cloud instances may have some users with Jira administrator permissions, but not to the level that you'd find in other deployment options. server, which is hosted by your organization, and this course focuses on Jira Server and the main administration tasks related to running a Jira instance. These tasks are primarily for the standard Jira administrator and not the system administrator. And finally, Data Center, which is hosted by your organisation and is typical for larger instals of Jira, It includes clustering for high-availability solutions to scale your instance as it grows and disaster recovery in case of a system outage.

The data centre is similar to Jira Server in its administration needs and includes similar administration options. Note that some addons don't have datacenter versions, but they have other Jira Server functionality. As a Jira administrator, your main responsibility is to ensure that your organization's Jira instance is well functioning and available to all users at all times. You do this by making sure your instance and supporting architecture are kept up to date so that users have access to the latest features and can work in the most efficient way possible. You're also responsible for configuring your Jira instance and helping users understand how they can use it according to best practices. Typically, as a Jira admin, the main itemsyou are responsible for are theming and brandingJira, managing applications and add ons, creating andmanaging projects, creating and configuring schemes, developing andcustomizing workflows, creating and managing users and groups,and maintaining and monitoring your system. We cover these areas in detail throughoutthe course and throughout the course. We focus on Jira admin tasks, primarily handled through the Jira admin settings. We don't focus as much on server maintenance or system administration tasks.

However, you can find more detailed technical administration tasks in our Jira reference manual. We also don't cover Jira software or Sprints in this course, but you can find that information in our Jira software server courses. As part of this course, we follow a sample company through the administration tasks in Jira, using hands-on activities and demonstrations to help guide you through Jira administration. Let's talk a bit more about that next. Throughout the course, we'll follow Great Adventure, a company that has been using a small instance of Jira for the past couple of years and has recently decided that it needs to scale up its Jira instance due to recent growth within the company. As the most experienced Jira user within Great Adventure, you have been promoted to become the Jira administrator and need to start thinking through the current configuration and deciding if you need to build new configuration elements or modify the existing ones so you can run the Great Adventure Jira instance according to Best Practices. Note that you need to have a Jira test instance available in which you're the admin and in which you're allowed to make configuration changes in order to complete the labs for this course. If you don't have such a lab environment, then you need to set one up according to the Atlassian System Requirements Quick Reference Guide linked below the video. The guide also provides documentation on the JIRA installation process to set up an evaluation installation for Windows and Linux. Your institution's change management process drives how your users request changes to Jira that can't be achieved by a project-level administrator.

Make sure to learn the change management process in your organization, as well as familiarise yourself with your organization's Jira version, even if it's not required. As part of being an effective administrator, it's important to make sure that you document and publish your organization's change management process so that your users can understand the processes they need to follow to request changes. As a Jira administrator, this practise also ensures that you outline what information should be included within a change request. You may find the Atlassian's Guide to Administering Jira Software link below a useful reference to refresh your memory on how to perform common admin tasks. Alternatively, we recommend that a must-have for Jira admins is the Jira strategy. Admin Workbook by Rachel Wright This book is a comprehensive guide to all the actions an admin is required to know in Jira and will become an invaluable reference guide in your role as a Jira admin. And finally, we reference our own guide throughout the course, which you can find on the Downloads page.

2. Branding Your Jira Instance

As the Jira administrator, you may be asked to create filters that your Jira instance can use, as well as create the Jira system dashboard. Dashboards are powered by filters, so it's important that you understand how they work as well as know some best practises on how to use them. With this knowledge, you can use JQL and filters to create a useful system dashboard. In this section, we review JQL and talk about some tips for managing saved filters, and then we talk about putting that knowledge to use when creating your system dashboard. We won't spend a lot of time on JQL in this particular course or video. However, it does help to have a good grasp on JQL as a Jira administrator, so we recommend that you check out the Jira Server for PowerUsers Course to get a refresher on advanced JQL beyond what we cover in this course. JQL at the most basic level allows you to search for issues within Jira, and through JQL combinations, you can create complex queries that help you identify the information you need to create a report or save a filter. The cool thing about JQL is that you can extend it through apps such as Script Runner for Jira. Using a tool like Script Runner, you can create scripted fields, which can allow you to run scripts and calculate information based on your JQL queries. With advanced or even extended JQL, you can build powerful filters and dashboards in Jira. Filters in Jira allow you to save the query for a JQUEL search so you can repeat the search or share it with other users. You also use filters and Jira software for boards, reports, and Jira dashboards. If you require more in-depth information on how filters work inside of Jira, then you may wish to refer back to the Advanced Jira Query Language section of the Jira Server for Power Users course. However, let's check out some best practises to consider when using filters as the Jira admin. You may create filters for yourself and your team, as well as shared filters that your entire user base can use. Take time to periodically review your filters and evaluate if you still need to keep them around. Check for things like how long ago someone viewed or updated the filters, and then delete filters that aren't needed anymore. You want to avoid having too many filters because they can cause performance issues in large Jira instances. But of course, make sure you don't get rid of a filter that someone else relies on. Be careful about filter subscriptions and accidentally spamming users. You should review your subscriptions to see how often users receive filter results and update the frequency as needed. When creating filters, try not to use hardcoded attributes like specific assignees or projects, etc. if you intend to share the filters on a wide scale instead of with a specific assignee. For example, you can use some dynamic JQL current user to get a username and place it in a JQL query. This approach allows others to easily use the filter for their own needs. On a similar note, try not to duplicate filters and update any similar filters that you may be able to merge. Last but not least, use short and descriptive names for your filters so that other Gira users can understand the purpose of the search they perform. And when you're creating the filters, be consistent in how you name them. If you create filters for your entire instance to use, it helps your users to know what to expect from each filter by referencing consistent naming conventions. Now that we've covered JQL and Jirafilters, let's talk about how to use that knowledge to create a fantastic system dashboard. But first, let's review dashboards. A dashboard is a visual display that users can create to show different types of information, such as a set of filtered issues or user activity. Dashboards use gadgets to organise and illustrate this information in a variety of ways. There are lots of gadgets out there, including some from Atlassian and some on the marketplace. If you do use third-party gadgets, make sure to review any updates to those products and adjust any settings to ensure your dashboard gadgets continue to function properly. We won't cover creating or managing dashboards in this course, but if you're looking for that information, checkout the Jira Server for Beginners course. We do look at the Jira admin's role in creating the Jira System dashboard here, though. Let's check that out. Next, the System Dashboard in Jira is the default dashboard that users see the very first time they log in, or the dashboard they see if they don't choose a different favourite dashboard.

Only those with Jira admin permissions can manage the System Dashboard. Another useful feature of the System Dashboard is that it's dynamic, which means that a Jira admin can add gadgets that not all users have permission to see. Users with the correct permissions will see the gadget, and for those without permissions, the dashboard will automatically move the gadgets around without leaving unsightly gaps. Let's take a look at where you can go to edit the system dashboard in a short demo. Select System from the Jiraadministration menu on the top ribbon. Then on the Jira admin page in the left menu, scroll down to the User Interface section and click System Dashboard. On the System Dashboard page, you can update the dashboard as you would with any other dashboard, keeping in mind that changes to this dashboard affect your entire Giro user base. Okay, so let's add a gadget in the Add a Gadget window, use the search bar to search for filter results, and note that you may need to load all gadgets here. If you don't see the Filter Results Gadget at first, then next to Filter Results, click Add Gadget and close the window. Update the Filter Results gadget with a saved filter. For example, we select the high priority assigned to Mefilter for the number of results and columns to display. We leave these at the default settings, and we're going to select to update this gadget every 15 minutes. Then we click Save, and we're done. And we can see a preview of our gadget in our settings. And for our example, we can log out as the administrator and log back in as a regular user. Maya Lopez: To see how the gadget appears on the system dashboard for her, we use a filter that includes the current user function to display specific issues that apply to the currently logged-in user on the system dashboard. This sort of approach works well so that when a user logs in, they can see the information that applies to them.

3. Reviewing Filters and the System Dashboard

Updating the look and feel of your Jira instance through branding changes and other customization is part of your job as a Jira admin. These options allow you to change logos, colors, date and time settings, and more, according to what your organisation needs and wants. In this video, we cover the items you can customise in Jira as well as working with Jira's general settings. Before we dig into some of the visual changes you can make in Jira, let's talk about a few general configuration settings you can update for your organization's needs. These settings include using private or public mode, using a capture on Jira Sign Up, and updating your installed languages. Depending on how your organisation plans to use Jira, you may want to set your instance up in public or private modes. An instance using private mode requires administrators to create the accounts. Private instances are more for internal JIRA use within an organization's departments. Public Mode, on the other hand, allows users to sign up to use Jiro through self registration.This option may make sense for companies using Jira for their bug tracking or external-facing issue tracking systems. If you are going to use public mode, we recommend that you enable capture to verify users and prevent fake spam accounts from signing up to your Jira instance. In addition to enabling Capture, you can specify the number of authentication attempts before Capture is displayed to a user. This is different from using Capture on Signup, but it is valid if you want to provide some additional security for your users. The default for the maximum authentication attempts allowed is three. As part of Jira's General Configuration settings, you can set your Jira instance's default language as well as the default user time zone. You find these options in the Internationalization section of General Configuration. There are several languages available, including English, UK, or US. French, Japanese, Spanish, and German. You can also obtain plugins for many more languages. Now let's talk about the visual items you can customise in Jira. We're going to spend a bit of time looking at each item you can customise and then work through a couple of more detailed demonstrations. Find these settings under Jura's administration system. Look and feel first at your site title and logo. Customizing the logo and site title of your Jira instance means you can choose your own image for the logo in the left corner of the top ribbon. This image replaces the default Jira image, and when you enable a site title, you can display your chosen name for your Jira instance next to your custom logo. Note that you configure your site title when you set up your Jira instance, but you can change it as needed from System General Configuration. In addition to your Jira instance logo, you can set a favourite icon, which will display as a favicon in browser tabs, or when someone favourites or bookmarks your Jira instance, you can either upload your own logo or specify a URL. Moving along with more visual changes you can make, there are two places you can configure colours for branding your Jira instance: UI colours and dashboard colors. For the Jira UI colors, you can change the colour of the top ribbon, as well as specify the colours of any buttons or links inside of your Jira instance. The easiest way to manage these colours is to apply a colour scheme that matches your uploaded logo. Jira applies a scheme that uses colours from the logo that are complementary to each other. However, you can also select your own colours for your UI items. Dashboard colours are simple. You can change the default colour for a new dashboard as well as define up to seven colours that users can select for gadgets on their own dashboards. There are no restrictions on the number of times a colour can be used or the number of times that a colour can be specified. This means that if you wish to use one or two colours for dashboard gadgets, then this is a valid configuration. You choose your colours and leave the remaining colours as white. Let's take a look at setting these colours in a quick demonstration. From the top ribbon, click the Jira Administration menu, and then select System on the JiraAdmin page in the left menu. Scroll to User Interface, and then select Look and Feel. On the Look and Feel page, scroll to the colour section. Your UI colours appear before the dashboard. Gadget colors? We're going to match our scheme to our Great Adventure logo under the section title. To apply a scheme that matches your logo, click the Click Here link. Your UI elements now have new colors. Notice that anything that has changed from the default shows a Revert button next to the element in color. If you want to go back to the original default colour for an item, just click Revert. If you want to adjust any of the elements, you can click the colour picker and adjust your colour further.

For example, we decided to update the colour of the menu item Highlight Text to see how that might look in our menu. Once you select a color, click Update. To update that element's colour and to see your changes in your UI, you may need to refresh the page, and if you don't like what you see, you can always go back and revert to the default color. The Dashboard Gadget colours section for your Jira Look and Feel works in a very similar way, and you can also revert any colours you change your mind on. For now, we have a couple of other items to talk about regarding branding, so let's move on to look at date and time formats. The Date and Time Format section of the Look and Feel page is where you can configure all of the date and time format settings using the Java Simple Date format that all date and timepicker fields inside of Jira will use. There are several options, including the time format and day-month-year format. For a closer look, you can check out the table provided in our JIRA reference book. Finally, in terms of branding, the last item to talk about in this video is the announcement banner.

You can set this banner to appear just under the top menu bar inside of Jira. With this banner, you can communicate important information to Jira users, such as downtime or scheduled maintenance. Let's walk through the process of configuring the announcement banner. From the top ribbon, click the Jira Administration menu, and then select System. on the Jira admin page. In the left menu, scroll to the User Interface section and then click Announcement Banner. on the announcement banner page. In the announcement text box, enter your announcement text. You can use HTML in your announcement banner if you wish. With HTML, you can link to a specific page or website or add some formatting to your banner. For example, we use some formatting to add a message about Violet, the new Great Adventure Jira admin, as well as a planned outage over the weekend. Next, we need to set the visibility level of the banner. If you want a public banner available to users who aren't logged in, you can select Public. For a private banner shown only to logged-in Jira users, select Private. We use the "private" option and then click "set banner." Once you set your banner, you can see the banner posted at the top of the Jira site, just under the top ribbon. When you're ready to remove the banner, all you need to do is go back to the announcement banner page and remove the text from the announcement text box.

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Applications and Add-ons

1. Jira Applications

Since the advent of Jira Seven, Jira has been split into three different applications, Jira Core, Jira Software, and Jira Service Desk. These applications are each designed to provide different sets of functionality to a user and allow you to add on additional functionality if you need it. Since Jira software and Jira service desk are built on Jira Core, you receive all Jira Core functionality if you install either software or service desk. JIRA Core is the most basic version of JIRA. It's designed for nontechnical teams such as HR, Marketing, or Finance, who tend to have little technical experience and just require a tool to plan and track the tasks they're working on. In a nutshell, Gira Core is a step up from Trello, a checklist-style tool acquired by Atlassian in 2007, and other Jira applications. It provides business, project types, project management, process management, and task management. In the future, atlassian seems to be planningto add simple boards for juicor projects whichwould allow users to interact with and managetheir issues in a more visual manner, butthis is currently only available on Jira Cloud.

Jira Software augments Jira Core by adding a layer that enables teams to plan and organise their issues in an agile manner using the Scrum or Kanban methodology. Jira Software allows teams to plan and track work using versions, which group issues into scheduled releases. It also provides scrum and can create boards, which teams can use to visualise work being completed and backlogs to order and plan the work to come. Jira Software adds scrum, software development, Kanban software development, and basic software development project types to those provided with Jira Corps. Jira Service Desk is an application that also sits on top of Jira Core alongside Jira Software and is built for it and support teams. It provides a platform to allow customers to raise support requests and to allow support teams to manage and respond to those requests. Service Desk projects have customer portals attached to them that allow users, either internally or externally, to submit requests and interact with them without being able to see any internal Jira issues or other customers' issues. Those requests can be tied to customer SLA metrics, which can be checked and reported against Jira. The service desk, of course, has its own project types to add. Basic Service Desk, IT Service Desk, and Customer Service Desk Note that Core software and Service Desk are the three Jira applications.

An application is not the same thing as an app, which we discuss in upcoming chapters. You can see information about each of the applications you have installed on the Versions and Licenses page under Administration. Applications, Versions, and Licenses Jira applications are constantly updated by Atlassian and are thus versioned. At the time of writing this course, the most recent version of Jira was 7.2.3, but it's likely to have already been updated by the time you see this. When you look at the Versions and Licenses page, the version of Jira you have installed is prominently displayed next to the name of the application. When you purchase the Jira product, you have access to all updates for that product for twelve months. After that time, you need to renew your licence or stop updating your instance. You can also see in smaller text what your user limit is and how many of those licences have been used. If you ever exceeded the number of licences your company has, none of your users would be able to create new issues until they had been resolved. Obviously, that would cause a huge influx of complaints and emails to your inbox as the Jira admin. So don't just ignore the warning banners you get when your used number is reaching its upper limit. You can also see your maintenance expiration date, just like upgrades. When you purchase a Jira product, you have access to all Atlassian support for twelve months, after which you would need to renew your licence to continue to receive support. Right below that, you can see your S-number, the type of licence you have, your company's name, and your licence key. If you require it, you can also uninstall the application.

2. How Jira's Application Licensing Works

Licensing for Jira works differently depending on which applications you're using. Jira Core and Jira Software are licensed based on the number of users. The smallest licensing tier is for one to ten users, and the maximum tier is for users greater than 100, with various tiers existing between them. Jira Service Desk has three different types of licenses: agent, customer, and collaborator. Agent licenses for Jira Service Desk are similar to those for Jira Core and Jira Software in that they're grouped into user tiers, which range from one to three agents for the smallest tier to greater than 250 for the largest. The difference is that with Service Desk, you're charged specifically for those users who have access to the Service Desk features, which is primarily your agents. Collaborator licenses in Service Desk are for users who already have a Jira Core or Software license and enable those users to help out the Service Desk agents by allowing them to add attachments or internal comments to tickets inside of the standard Jiro user interface and without having to access the portal and any of the features that it provides. These licenses come with Jira Service Desk and don't have any additional cost associated with them since they make use of the existing core and software licenses. Customer licenses and the Service Desk are free licenses that allow internal and external customers to access the customer portal in order to raise and manage support requests. Customer licenses don't allow for access to other Service Desk project portals or any of the main Jira features.

The number of customer licenses that can be issued is unlimited. However, as a best practice, we recommend issuing no more than five customer licenses for each customer in order to be able to manage who can raise requests and to ensure the customer's internal support team is triaging requests before they raise them with your organization. Pricing for all the applications can be found on the Atlas Sian website linked below this video. However, for the best deal, we recommend contacting an Adaptivist Platinum Partner at opportunity.QAtaptivist.com. That said, if you're an academic institution or a nonprofit or charity, go directly to Atlassian, as they give a reduced price for academic institutions and provide free community licences for nonprofits and charities who are unable to purchase the software on their own. Before Jira version seven, Jira Software and Jira Service Desk were add-ons or apps that were downloaded and installed from the Atlassian Marketplace. Then they were switched over to be applications—which have to be purchased and installed differently. In this demo, you'll see how to install a new application, Jira Service Desk, for great adventures.

Jira instance first, open up the Jira Service Desk product page located at www.atlassian.com/software/jiraservicedesk in your web browser. Next, click on the All Server Versions link at the bottom of the screen. Then click "I already have Jira Software or Jira Core link," and from there hover over the top entry. the most recent version of Jira Service Desk and click the download link. Pay attention to where it's downloading to on your computer, as you'll need to find it. Soon as that downloads, navigate and log in to your test environment with an admin account from the top ribbon, go to the Administration cog in the top right, and click the Applications link. In the drop-down menu from the Versions and Licenses page, click Upload Application. Select the Jira Service Desk OBR file on your computer that you downloaded in step four and click the Upload button. Wait for the Upload Application dialogue to complete, and you see a screen that shows that Jira Service Desk is installed but unlicensed. To apply for a license, click on the "paste license link." If your company hasn't already purchased licenses for test instances like these, you can generate evaluation licenses at Melbourne My atlassian.com License Evaluation. Finally, on the dialogue that's displayed, paste in the license below and click the Update License button. You'll return to the Versions and Licenses page, but this time with a successfully installed new application.

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