JIRA, Confluence and their integration

Transcription

1 Term work report JIRA, Confluence and their integration Průmyslové informační systémy(a0m33pis) Prepared by Radu Fiser Czech Technical University in Prague Faculty of Electrical Engineering Summer semester 2009/ /5/2010 Copyright 2010 by Radu Fiser. Permission is granted to use, modify, and distribute this document.

2 Page ii Abstract This document represents a term work report for Enterprise Information Systems course held in the summer semester 2009/2010 at Faculty of Electrical Engineering of Czech Technical University in Prague. The objective of the term work was to pick and analyze an enterprise software system. This particular paper presents the collaborative software systems JIRA and Confluence as well as means of their mutual integration.

3 Page iii Table of Contents Table of Contents... iii 1. Atlassian Confluence Overview Uses Features Spaces Editing Versioning Notifications Others Atlassian JIRA Overview Uses JIRA concepts Features Issue Creation Reporting Project road mapping Notifications Others Integration Combination of Confluence Shortcuts and JIRA Quick Search Trackback Integration by using macros and gadgets Integrate user-management References...13

4 1. Atlassian Confluence 1.1 Overview Confluence is the most popular web-based corporate wiki. It is a platform for an organization to collaborate across teams and share business knowledge. It is developed and marketed by Atlassian Software Systems. Confluence is sold as either on-premises software or as a hosted solution. Its license is proprietary, but a zero-cost license program is available for non-profit organizations and open source projects. Confluence is used by over 7,800 organizations. Notable customers include Adobe Systems, Sun Microsystems, IBM, SAP, Bloomberg LP, Microsoft and United Nations. 1.2 Uses The slogan of Confluence is One wiki. Many uses The spectrum of uses for Confluence is very large indeed. Possible uses are: Intranet software Knowledge management system Documentation Enterprise ready wiki software 1.3 Features Spaces In Confluence, content is organized into spaces. There are two types of spaces: Global spaces are areas on your site into which you can group content items (pages, attachments, news, etc) based on any theme or topic of your choice. For example, you may want separate areas on your site for each team or project within your organization. In Confluence, you can set up a different space for each team or project. You can build content for each of these spaces individually; decide who its users are, and even archive mail separately within each. There is no limit to the number of global spaces you can create within Confluence. Personal spaces belong to particular users, and rather than being listed on the Dashboard are available from the People Directory. They can contain pages and news items, be searched and browsed. They can be kept private, or opened up so the whole world can view and edit them, just like global spaces. Confluence treats each space as an independently managed wiki. This means that each space functions autonomously within your site.

5 Screenshot-1: Confluence space management panel Each space: Has its own pages, news items, comments, bookmarks, RSS feeds and mail Has its own access control settings, so you can set different levels of access to different spaces. Can be separately exported to PDF, HTML or XML Editing Confluence allows a variety of editing choices Wiki Markup Rich Text Editor (What You See Is What You Get) Microsoft Word/OpenOfficeWriter Screenshot-2: Page Tools

6 Screenshot-3: WYSIWYG editor Versioning Confluence keeps a history of all page changes. You can see what any of the previous versions of the page looked like, as well as link to them. Screenshot-4: Restoring an Older Version of a Page There are two ways that you can view an older version of a page. Via the 'View Change' link this allows you to quickly check the most recent change to a page and the most recent version of the page, prior to the current version. Via the Page History this allows you to look for a specific version of the page. Confluence tracks histories of changes to pages by maintaining a version of the page each time it is modified. It is easy to view changes between different versions and to restore a previous version if required.

7 1.3.4 Notifications In Confluence you can keep track of changes to a single page, an entire space, or to all spaces on your site. You can only track updates to content visible to you. Screenshot-5: Visualization of recent updates Watch a space: be notified by of new or modified content within a space. The notifications contain: Pages created and updated Blog posts created and updated User profiles updated Watch a page: be notified by of updates to a page. Subscribe to Daily Reports: be notified daily of changes in all spaces to which you have 'view' access. RSS Feeds: subscribe to Confluence RSS feeds to stay informed of New and updated pages New comments New news items New attachments

8 Screenshot-6: RSS Feed Builder Others Powerful search Content tagging Office integration Web 2.0 Social Networking Profile pages 300+ plug-ins (calendars, task list, charts) Secure Confluence provides fine-grained enterprise level security Usable Intuitive interface designed with both business and technical users in mind Administration A low maintenance system with straightforward administration capability Connectivity Able to integrate with existing user stores (LDAP or Active Directory) and industry-standard databases Open An open API, full source code access allow for further integration and customization of Confluence functionality SharePoint Access SharePoint s document facilities from within Confluence and vice versa. And search both from a single location

9 2. Atlassian JIRA 2.1 Overview JIRA is a proprietary enterprise software product, developed by Atlassian, commonly used for bug tracking, issue tracking, and project management. The product name, JIRA, is not an acronym but rather a truncation of "Gojira", the Japanese name for Godzilla. It has been developed since 2004.Atlassian provides JIRA for free to open source projects, and organizations that are non-profit, non-government, non-academic, non-commercial, non-political, and secular.for commercial customers, the full source code is available under a developer source license 2.2 Uses 1. Bugs/Change Requests Tracking JIRA simplifies every step of tracking bugs for everyone involved. Creating, triaging and resolving bugs is a snap. And managing bugs along with all other development tasks in the a single project keeps your software development on track. Create new bugs in seconds from your browser, , IDE or smartphone client Navigate JIRA menus and execute frequently used actions using keyboard shortcuts View activity history to access recently opened issues, projects and searches Use Quick Search to find bugs based on user, project, issue key or filter shortcuts. 2. Help-desk / Support / Customer Service 3. Project Management/ Tracking 4. Task Tracking 5. Requirements Management 6. Workflow / Process Management 2.3 JIRA concepts What is a project? A JIRA project is a collection of issues, and is defined according to your organization s requirements. For example, a JIRA project could be: a software development project a marketing campaign

10 a helpdesk system a leave request management system a website enhancement request system What is an issue? Depending on how your organization is using JIRA, an issue could represent a software bug, a project task, a helpdesk ticket, a leave request form, etc. What is a component? Figure-1: JIRA Concept scheme A project component is a logical grouping of issues within a project. Each project may consist of various components (or none), depending on your organization s needs. For example, a software development project could consist of components called 'Documentation', 'Backend', ' Subsystem', and GUI. A website enhancement request system might consist of components called 'Products', 'Contact Us', etc

11 What is a workflow? Workflow is the movement of an issue through various statuses during its lifecycle. JIRA's default workflow looks like in figure 2 Figure-2: JIRA Workflow scheme 2.4 Features Issue Creation Creating tasks, a bug report, feature requests, helpdesk tickets, is a breeze. No need to transcribe issues from s to Excel worksheet anymore. Issue can be easily created via Web: Filling the form on the Web page Sending an to a preconfigured address Reporting JIRA provides reports that show statistics for particular people, projects, versions, or other fields within issues

12 Workload Pie Chart Report shows the relative workload for assignees of all issues in a particular project or issue filter. User Workload Report shows how much work a user has been allocated, and how long it should take. Version Workload Report shows how much outstanding work there is (per user and per issue) before a given version is complete. Version Time Tracking Report Shows progress towards completing a given version, based on issues' work logs and time estimates. Single Level Group By Report shows the search results from an issue filter, grouped by a field of your choice. Created vs. Resolved Issues Report shows the number of issues created vs number of issues resolved over a given period of time. Resolution Time Report shows the average time taken to resolve issues. Pie Chart Report shows the search results from a specified issue filter (or project) in a pie-chart, based on a statistic of your choice. Average Age Report shows the average age (in days) of unresolved issues. Recently Created Issues Report shows the rate at which issues are being created. Time Since Issues Report shows the number of issues for which your chosen date field (e.g. 'Created') was set on a given date Project road mapping JIRA provides a Road Map for each project, which shows issues scheduled for the next ten unreleased versions. The Road Map provide an overview of progress made towards releasing a version. Screenshot-7: JIRA Road Map of a project

13 2.4.4 Notifications JIRA enables you to receive the information you need, when you need it. JIRA supports: Configurable alerts as and when issues are updated Optional s to remind on overdue tasks Subscribe to weekly/monthly reports on issue status Others Secure JIRA provides fine-grained enterprise level security Usable Intuitive interface designed with both business and technical users in mind Track Keep track of all activities, changes and work logged against issues Administration A low maintenance system with straightforward administration capability Extensible With over 100 plug-ins contributed by the community Open An open API, full source code access allow for further integration and customization of JIRA functionality 3. Integration You can create the ultimate project management application by connecting JIRA and Confluence. The out-of-the-box integrations of Confluence with JIRA are: Combination of Confluence Shortcuts and JIRA Quick Search Trackback or two-way linking Using gadgets and macros Integration of user-management 3.1 Combination of Confluence Shortcuts and JIRA Quick Search In Confluence at Dashboard >Administration > Shortcut Links you can define shortcuts By specifying a key e.g. Key=JIRA and an Expanded Value = you can access any particular JIRA issue from in Confluence by simply defining the following tag: [JRA-441@JIRA]. The link will be represented on the page as follows: JIRA Issue JRA-441.

14 3.2 Trackback to. Trackback linking is a means by which a page can tell another page that it has been linked In, you can configure whether to: Display links to external pages that link to your pages (accept incoming trackback pings) Notify external pages that they have been linked to (send outgoing pings) Example of usage: Document your user stories or use-cases in Confluence, and see at a glance which issues affect each use-case. 3.3 Integration by using macros and gadgets Further the JIRA Issue macro will be presented. The JIRA Issues macro allows you to display a list of issues from a JIRA site within a page in Confluence. In other words, if you have your own JIRA site, your Confluence page can show a list of issues from your JIRA project. You can also show a list of issues from any JIRA site to which you and your readers have access. Screenshot-9: Issue Filtering Steps Displaying a List of JIRA Issues on a Confluence Page are:. 1. Go to the 'Issues' screen and create a new filter 2. Set up your search parameters and use 'View' to check the issues returned.

15 3. Once the filter is finished, go to the Filter's 'View' tab/section in the top-left area of the JIRA interface. 4. Copy the XML link. Click the 'Views' menu and use this menu to copy the XML link to your clipboard. For example, right-click the 'XML' menu item and choose the right-click menu option for copying that link. 5. Type the following text into a new line at the appropriate location in Confluence: {jiraissues:url=content} 6. Replace 'CONTENT' with the JIRA filter URL(see screenshot 8) Screenshot-8: Use of JIRA Issue macros 3.4 Integrate user-management To save you having to enter users into both, you may benefit from using Atlassian Crowd 1 as the user-repository for both applications Alternatively you can configure Confluence to use JIRA's user database 1 Crowd is an application security framework that handles authentication and authorization for your web-based applications. With Crowd you can quickly integrate multiple web applications into a single security architecture that supports single sign-on (SSO) and centralized identity management

16 References ashboard