JIRA 5.2 Essentials: Learn how to track bugs and issues, and manage your software development projects with JIRA , Second Edition

Like most other information systems, JIRA organizes its data in a hierarchical structure. At the lowest level, we have fields, which are used to hold raw information. Then we have issues, which are like a unit of work to be performed. An issue will belong to one project, which defines the context of the issue. Finally, we have project categories, which logically group similar projects together. We will discuss each of these levels in the following sections:

Before we start working with projects in JIRA, we need to first understand a little bit about permissions. Permission is a big topic and we will be covering that in detail in Chapter 8, Securing JIRA. For now, we will briefly talk about the permissions related to creating and deleting, administering, and browsing projects.

In JIRA, users with the JIRA administrator permission will be able to create and delete projects. By default, users in the jira-administrators group have this permission, so the administrator user we have created during the installation process in Chapter 1, Getting Started with JIRA, will be able to create new projects, and we will be referring to this user and any other users with this permission as JIRA Administrator.

For any given project, users with the Administer Project permission for that project will be able to administer the project's configuration settings. As we will see in the later sections in this chapter, this includes updating the...

As we have seen earlier, users with the JIRA Administrator's permission are the only ones allowed to create and delete projects, and this is done through the JIRA Administration interface. It can be accessed as follows:

The JIRA Administration interface is where JIRA administrators can manage and control all the aspects of JIRA, including setting up projects, managing users, backing up and restoring the system, and requesting support from Atlassian, to just name a few. You can leave this interface by clicking on the Exit Administration link at the top-right corner.

If you are familiar with previous versions of JIRA, you will notice that in JIRA 5, this interface looks completely different. Atlassian has been revamping JIRA's user interface, making it cleaner and easier for the end users. In the older versions of JIRA, all the administration...

There are two distinctive interfaces for projects. The first interface is designed for everyday users, providing useful information on how the project is going with graphs and statistics, called Project Browser.

The second interface is designed for project administrators to control project configuration settings, such as permissions and workflows, called Project Administration.

Since when you first create a project, the first interface you see will be Project Administration, we will start our discussion around this interface and then move on to the Project Browser interface.

The Project Administration interface is where project administrators can manage the settings and configurations for their projects. For example, you can change the project's name, select what issue types will be available for the project, and manage a list of components within the project. As we have seen earlier, any user with the Administer Projects permission for a given project will be able to access this interface.

From the Project Administration page, you will be able to perform the following key operations:

We have seen the Project Administration interface, which is designed for project administrators. For most users, Project Browser is the interface they will be using with JIRA. Project Browser acts like the home page of a project, providing much useful information, such as issue statistics, recent user activities, and source control information.

To access the Project Browser interface, you first need to make sure that you have the Browse Project permission, and then select the project you wish to browse. The easiest way to select your project is to find your project from the projects listing.

Now that we have seen all the key aspects that make up a project, let's revisit what we have learned so far and put them to practice. In this exercise, we will be setting up a project for our support teams:

In this chapter, we have looked at one of the most important concepts in JIRA, projects, and how to create and manage them. Permissions have also been introduced for the first time, and we looked at three permissions that are related to creating and deleting, administering, and browsing projects.

We have been introduced to the various interfaces JIRA provides for project administrators and everyday users, the Project Administration interface, and Project Browser interface respectively.

Let's conclude this chapter by starting on our exercise to implement a support desk system. In the next chapter, you will be introduced to another important concept in JIRA, issues.