Starting with JIRA 7, a new concept called project type is introduced. Project types define the features available for your projects as well as the user interface that will be used to present information within the projects. Each project type also comes with one or more templates, with a set of predefined configurations to help you get started quickly. The following screenshot shows you the project types and their templates from an out-of-the-box JIRA Software installation.

If you create a project using the Scrum software development template under the Software project type, your project will come with a scrum board and a set of configurations designed to work with the scrum methodology. On the other hand, if you choose the Task management template under the Business project type, your project will have a different user...

Before we start working with projects in JIRA, we need to first understand a little bit about permissions. Permissions are a big topic, and we will cover it in detail in Chapter 9, Securing JIRA. For now, we will briefly talk about 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 created during the installation process in Chapter 1, Getting Started with JIRA, will be able to create new projects. We will refer to this user and any other users with this permission as a 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 of this chapter, this means that users with this permission will have access...

To create a new project, the easiest way is to select the Create Project menu option from the Projects drop-down menu from the top navigation bar. This will bring up the Create project dialog. Note that, as we explained, you need to be a JIRA Administrator (such as the user we created during installation) to create projects. This option is only available if you have the permission.

From the Create project dialog, select the template you want to use under the Business heading and click on Next. On the next page, JIRA will display pre-defined configurations for the template you have selected. In our example, we have selected the Task management template, so JIRA provides us with two issue types, and a very simple workflow with two steps. Click on the Select button to continue.

For the third and last...

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

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

After creating a project, the first interface you see will be project browser. We will start our discussion around this interface and then move on to the Project Administration interface.

Project browser is the interface that most users will use with JIRA. It acts as the home page of the project, providing useful information, such as recent activities in the project, reports, and information from other connected systems, such as source control and continuous integration. The actual project browser interface depends on the project type, so it will vary from project to project. For example, the scrum software development project will display an agile board as its default view, as shown in the following screenshot:

For business projects such as general task management, project browser will display an activity stream showing the latest updates in the project, as shown in the following screenshot:

To access the Project Browser interface, simply select the project from the Projects drop-down or the project list via the View All Projects option. Note that you will also need to have the Browse Project permission. The project browser is made up of several tabs, which...