The short list. Learn about six keyboard shortcuts rather than all of them. Save the filters you rebuild weekly and put them on a dashboard. Use bulk edit instead of updating issues one at a time. Put estimates on issues even if nobody reports on them yet, because every useful number later depends on them. Automate the nagging, not the work. And configure your board to answer one question rather than show everything.
Most people learn about a fifth of Jira and then stop, because the fifth works. Then they spend two years doing by hand the things Jira would do for them: clicking through four screens to update ten issues, rebuilding the same filter every Monday, reading a board that could have told them what they needed at a glance. These are the thirteen things that give back the most time, roughly in the order we would teach them.
In this blog post, we’ll be discussing 11 Jira tips and tricks to help you use the software more effectively. We’ll be discussing how to optimize your workflow, set up projects, and manage tasks more easily.
Which Jira tips help most when you are starting out?
A good project manager understands that keeping the team organized and on track with the project can be a daunting task. With so many tasks, tasks, and deadlines to manage, it can be overwhelming. Fortunately, Jira is an excellent project management tool that can make staying organized and on-task much easier. Here are some Jira tricks and tips for beginners on how to use it effectively.
1. Get to know the interface
The built-in Jira capabilities and Jira interface is designed to make finding the information you need easy. It’s important to familiarize yourself with the various screens and features of the interface so that you can quickly access the information you need. For example, the Jira dashboard page is a great way to get an overview of your projects and tasks.
2. Plan and organize your projects
Jira is a great project management tool that helps project teams with maximizing productivity. Before you start working on a project, it’s important to manage project settings, and create a project board with a backlog - plan out the tasks, set up task statuses assign them to the appropriate stakeholders, and set deadlines. These Jira quick tips will help to ensure that everyone is on the same page and that the project is completed on time.
There is a wide range of project templates for project managers ( including classic projects and agile projects ):
It’s also important to set up the project permissions so that each team member only has access to the tasks and information they need.
3. Save the filters you keep rebuilding
If you write the same JQL more than twice, save it. Then put the ones you check daily on a personal dashboard, and the ones your team checks on a shared one. Most people's Monday morning is a filter they have typed forty times.
4. Learn bulk change before you need it
Bulk change handles up to a thousand issues at once: move them between projects, edit fields, transition them, add labels, or delete. It lives behind the search results, which is why people find it late. The one habit to build is reading the confirmation screen properly, because bulk change is not undoable and "add label" sits next to "replace all labels".
5. Use labels
Among other Jira tips for project managers and team members to use on daily basis are labels, which are a great way to organize and categorize your tasks. They allow you to quickly group similar tasks together, so you can easily identify what needs to be done. Labels can also be used to indicate the status of tasks, such as “To Do”, “In Progress”, and “Done”.
6. Use custom fields
Among other interesting Jira tips and tricks are custom fields.
Custom fields are a great way to add additional information to your tasks and projects. For example, you can add custom fields for budget information, due dates, or other relevant data. This can be a great way to ensure that all of the necessary information is tracked and available.
7. Estimate task duration
The built-in time tracking feature allows estimating task duration and logging work in Jira, so it is an important part. This helps you to create more accurate timelines and plan out your project more efficiently. To make sure your estimates are as accurate as possible, it’s important to consider all the different tasks that need to be completed, as well as the resources available.
8. Prioritize tasks
Useful tips for project managers also include prioritizing tasks, as it is essential for successful Jira management. This helps you stay on track and focus your efforts on tasks that are most important to the project. You can prioritize tasks based on their importance, how long they will take, or the resources needed to complete them.
Prioritizing tasks is a key element to successful project management, and Jira provides a great way to do just that. The platform offers a default set of five priorities - highest, high, medium, low, and lowest - that can be used as is or customized to fit the needs of your team or project. This is a great way to ensure everyone on the team understands which tasks to complete first and is an invaluable tool for streamlining project workflow.
9. Automate tasks
Task automation is also among the useful Jira tips and tricks. Jira’s automation feature can save you a lot of time and effort. Automated tasks can be set up to run on a regular basis or when certain conditions are met. This can help you stay on top of tasks without having to manually check them.
10. Try keyboard shortcuts
Jira keyboard shortcuts are designed to help users quickly navigate the Jira platform. These shortcuts allow you to access commonly used features and actions quickly. They take place among the most useful Jira tips.
You may find a list of keyboard shortcuts here.
Which Jira tricks save the most time day to day?
Jira software is an extremely powerful and versatile tool for project managers. It is used by teams in a variety of industries, from software development to marketing, and is popular due to its scalability and wide range of features. It is important for every professional project manager to understand how to effectively use Jira in order to maximize its potential. So we will provide a little bit more Jira advanced tips and tricks in the following paragraphs.
11. Generate reports
Another convenient feature is generating reports on Jira issues and Jira projects. This can help you monitor progress and identify any bottlenecks quickly.
One of the most important aspects of using Jira software is understanding the different report types available. Reporting is essential for project managers to be able to track progress and identify areas for improvement.
Jira offers a variety of standard Jira built-in reports such as burndown report, and issue velocity charts, as well as other customizable reports.
12. Take advantage of integrations
Integrations between different platforms are important because they enable businesses to streamline their operations, save time and money, and increase efficiency. By connecting different platforms, businesses can more easily share information, automate processes, and access data across different systems. This can lead to improved customer service and greater insights into customer behavior and preferences.
Jira has a number of integrations, that can help you save time and make it easier to manage projects. You can integrate Jira with other applications, such as Slack, Gmail, and Dropbox, to streamline your workflow and make it easier to collaborate with your team.
13. Monitor your team's workflow and performance
Monitoring your team's workflow and performance is important because it allows you to identify areas of improvement and ensure that everyone on the team is working efficiently and effectively. It also helps you to identify any potential issues before they become larger problems and make sure that everyone is on the same page and working towards the same goals, which improves communication among team members.
Usually, a project manager has multiple projects in progress and organizes the activities of many teams, so sometimes it can be difficult to keep an eye on everything. PMs always need a comprehensive picture of who is doing what and when it will be done. Jira helps with that, but what is more important, Jira offers integration with third-party plugins (available for Jira Cloud and Jira Data Center) that can make your project management and planning even more effortless and time-saving. Users may find these plugins in the Atlassian Marketplace.
We can take as an example a Jira integration with the resource planning & tracking tool Activity Timeline. The tool provides a comprehensive overview of different projects, teams with users, and Jira issues with the help of the timelines visible on the planning dashboard.
Here you can find a variety of custom filters for advanced search, the ability to create new tasks, or assign existing ones, monitor activity on project tasks, plan for the short-, and long-term periods, and manage workload in order to prevent employees from work over, or underload:
All of the detailed overview data is visible on the dashboard and is fully synchronized with Jira and vice versa.
ActivityTimeline also provides built-in features, such as a personal dashboard where users can see only their tasks and projects, scheduled for days per week, or other periods, as well as other activities (such as logged hours, vacations, holidays, sick leaves, meetings, etc.)
Time-tracking features are also included as there is a possibility for users to log their worked hours. After that project managers can create timesheets based on the Jira data as shown in the following timesheet screenshot of software developers' logged hours. Timesheets can be exported as an Excel file:
The app provides a wide variety of reports that add more value on top of Jira reports. The Activity Timeline reporting section is quite expanded. Here users can find the different issue, resource, project reports, etc. All of them can be exported as an Excel file.
"How much is this project actually costing us?" Jira tracks effort, not money, so the usual answer is a spreadsheet someone rebuilds every month from a timesheet export. Finances takes the hours already logged in ActivityTimeline, applies the rates you set, and keeps the answer current. Nobody logs time twice and nobody exports anything to find out where the budget stands.
Three Jira hacks most people never find
Use these for the genuinely obscure ones rather than repeating the tips above:
~in JQL for fuzzy text matching, sosummary ~ "login"finds the issue you half-remember.- An
ORDER BYclause saved into a filter carries through into dashboard gadgets, so you can control gadget sort order without touching the gadget. - Creating issues by email, if your administrator has set up a mail handler. Useful for turning a forwarded client message into a ticket without retyping it.
Where to go next
One thing worth saying plainly. Most of these tips make Jira faster for the person using it, and none of them fix a plan that was never possible. If your real problem is that three people are at 130% and the board still looks fine, no keyboard shortcut helps, and that is a different article: planning team capacity in Jira.
