Preface
JIRA 5 was unveiled during the Atlassian Summit in 2011, the annual conference event that brings together users, partners, and experts around the world. It was at this time that we were given the first glimpse of the advancements and new direction that Atlassian is taking JIRA, the world's most popular issue-tracking software. Fast forward to 2012, and Atlassian announced its JIRA Enterprise offering and shortly after, JIRA 5.1, another monumental milestone for this amazing software. With this new release, Atlassian took JIRA to the next level, transforming it from a single software package into a complete platform that supports agile practices through plugins such GreenHopper and Bonfire, adding social aspects through features such as sharing and mentions, and a much improved user experience from the interface down to its core performance.
While JIRA 5 introduces numerous new features and enhancements, some of the more prominent changes for the old-time users are on the newly improved user interface designs. For this reason, we will assume nothing, and introduce JIRA fresh from the perspective of JIRA 5.
Packed with real-life examples and step-by-step instructions, this book will help you become a JIRA expert.
What this book covers
This book is organized into eleven chapters. Chapter 1, Getting Started with JIRA, starts with setting up your own JIRA, and the subsequent chapters will introduce the key features and concepts. With each chapter, you will learn important concepts such as business processes, workflows, e-mails, and notifications, and you will have the opportunity to put your newly acquired knowledge into practice by following a live JIRA sample implementation.
Chapter 1, Getting Started with JIRA, serves as a starting point for the book and aims to guide you through setting up a local copy of the JIRA application that will be used throughout the book. For seasoned JIRA experts, this will both refresh your knowledge and also introduce you to the new changes in JIRA 5. By the end of the chapter, you should have a running JIRA application.
Chapter 2, Project Management, covers how to set up projects and project-related administration tasks in JIRA. The concept of schemes will also be introduced, as it is the core concept in JIRA administration.
Chapter 3, Issue Management, covers everything related to issue creation and operations that can be performed on an issue (excluding workflow transitions). Furthermore, this chapter will gently touch on the various aspects of issues, as they are the focal point of JIRA. This chapter will also serve as an opportunity to show and allow you to set up dummy data that will be used by the sample project.
Chapter 4, Field Management, covers how JIRA collects data through the use of fields and how to expand on this ability through the use of custom fields. The chapter will then continue with the various behaviors that can be configured for fields.
Chapter 5, Screen Management, builds on the preceding chapter and explores the concept of screens and how users can create and manage their own screens. This chapter will tie in with all the previous chapters to show the power behind JIRA's screen design capabilities.
Chapter 6, Workflows and Business Processes, explores the most powerful feature offered by JIRA, workflows. The concept of issue life cycle will be introduced and various aspects of workflows explained. This chapter will also explore the relationship between workflows and other JIRA aspects previously covered, such as screens. The concept of JIRA extensions will also be briefly touched on in the sample project, using some popular free extensions.
Chapter 7, E-mails and Notifications, focuses on how to get automatic e-mail notifications from JIRA and explores the different settings that can be applied. This is a very important and powerful feature of JIRA and also a critical part of the example project for this book. This chapter will also tie in with the workflow chapter and explain in detail how JIRA manages its notification mechanism.
Chapter 8, Securing JIRA, focuses on the different security control features offered by JIRA. As this topic affects all aspects of JIRA, all previous topics will be touched on, explaining how security can be applied to each. We will also cover LDAP integration where you can hook up your JIRA with an existing LDAP system for user management.
Chapter 9, Searching, Reporting, and Analysis, will focus on how data captured in JIRA can be retrieved to provide various types of reporting features. We will also introduce the new search features introduced in JIRA 5.
Chapter 10, General Administration, covers other administration features offered by JIRA, including using add-ons and the Atlassian Marketplace. These features often do not form the backbone of a JIRA installation but can be very useful when used properly.
Chapter 11, Advanced Features, covers advanced features that can help to change your JIRA into more than just a traditional issue-tracking system. We will look at how you can run agile projects with JIRA through the use of GreenHopper, and turn JIRA into an effective feedback collection system.
What you need for this book
The installation package used in this book will be the Windows Installer standalone distribution, which you can get directly from Atlassian at http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/download.
At the time of writing, the latest version of JIRA is 5.2.5.
You will also need additional software, including Java SDK, which you can get from http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads and MySQL, which you can get from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads.
Who this book is for
If you want to get started with JIRA and learn how to install, use, and manage your instances, then this is the perfect book for you.
You will need to be familiar with the basic computer operations, specifically the system on which you will use JIRA, and software project management. For the first chapter, it's assumed that you are familiar with the operating system you are going to install JIRA on.
Conventions
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text are shown as follows: "we will be referring to this directory as JIRA_INSTALL."
A block of code is set as follows:
<security-constraint>
<web-resource-collection>
<web-resource-name>all-except-attachments</web-resource-name>
<url-pattern>*.js</url-pattern>
<url-pattern>*.jsp</url-pattern>
<url-pattern>*.jspa</url-pattern>
<url-pattern>*.css</url-pattern>
<url-pattern>/browse/*</url-pattern>
</web-resource-collection>
<user-data-constraint>
<transport-guarantee>CONFIDENTIAL</transport-guarantee>
</user-data-constraint>
</security-constraint>Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
mysql –u root -p
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Click on Next on the welcome screen."
Note
Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.
Tip
Tips and tricks appear like this.
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