10 ways to use Jira more efficiently with your team

jira efficiency
jira efficiency

10 ways to use Jira more efficiently with your team

Jira is a highly adaptable and feature-rich platform, which promises to help all types of teams manage their work. There are several features and toolkits that are purpose-built for software, business, DevOps and any other iteration of IT team to plan, track and release world-class software.

For example, software developers, project managers and SCRUM masters all rely on Jira Software to track bugs, manage the projects, products, processes and tasks, as well as expedite their software development efforts.

Jira can also be integrated with a broad range of additional Atlassian tools, including Confluence, Bitbucket, Slack and Github, to help expedite your development processes.

However, optimising your Jira setup is a complex undertaking, with many businesses, rely on a Jira contractor to streamline their approach. If you just want to streamline your approach to Jira, here are our 10 top tips and tricks to get the best from this diverse set of tools for your business:

#1 Keyboard shortcuts

Jira comes with a lot of neat keyboard shortcuts. If your team can use these shortcuts in their day-to-day roles, this can make a huge difference to their productivity.

You can access the full list from the “Keyboard shortcuts” selection directly in Jira. It’s in the top navigation “Help” menu (if you’re accessing Jira from a server) or in the bottom left sidebar (if you’re using a cloud-based installation).  You can also reach the shortcut list by simply typing a question mark (“?”).

#2 Fast actions

We all know that the keyboard is faster than a mouse when it comes to navigating any online entity. By pressing (“.”) on the keyboard, you can complete Jira actions without clicking anything. For example, you can travel to different page, move issues, clone issues and fast transition issues by workflow.

#3 Profile settings

There are a number of minor tweaks you can make to your profile settings to boost your productivity.

Under the “Preferences” section of your Profile, click the pencil icon and change the following:

  • Remove email notifications for when you make a change in Jira.
  • In the “Email type” field, make sure you get emails in the HTML format. The test format only shows there’s a change, but not what has changed.
  • Also, enable the “Autowatch” field, so you can watch issues you create or comment on.

#4 Quick filters

You can create some quick filters from the “Board Settings” area of Jira, letting your quickly view your information in an easy-to-understand and personalised format.

If you use this feature, a quick filters dropdown will appear on your board, which you can use to streamline your view of your Jira dashboard. For example, you can filter by “label”, recently updated cards and remove blocked cards from your view.

#5 Add links

If you use Slack, Confluence or another online space to discuss your project, you can add a link to your Jira menu. It’s simple to do, on the project’s left sidebar, just click “Add link”.

Your administrator can also add links to other apps and web-based tools you may use, which will appear in the project menu. So, you can view all the information you need from one place.

#6 Time logging

Time logging is a useful tool to monitor your and your team’s day-to-day activities. In Jira, the Tempo time-tracking tool can help you get better visibility over your workload and can help your team leaders make sure you’re all strategically aligned within a project.

You can also add Tempo to your Google Calendar and Slack channels, helping you monitor all the events and meetings you have for a project too.

#7 Use in-line issue create

You can create new Jira issues on the board and the backlog, which is a feature that is available in its next-generation projects. If you create an in-line issue, it will inherit all the selected filters (labels, assignees, versions, etc.) and links, saving you a lot of time.

#8 Save searches

If you create any custom searches, make sure you save them so you can reuse them at a later date. You can also create custom boards from saved searches and add search results to your dashboards, if you create a particularly powerful search.

#9 Use issue keys

If you use the Git version control system, you can add your issue key to branch your commit messages and name.

When branch naming, a good convention is to use the format /_

#10 Don’t stress

If you are just getting started with Jira, don’t worry about Jira’s different issue types (including story, task, bug etc) and all of the different features that come with each issue. It takes time to understand any new system and Jira is no exception. As a first step, try creating your first issues as stories (you can always change the type later). If in doubt, here is a good discussion from the Jira community on the topic.

Conclusion

These tips skim the surface of the rich set of features and functionality Jira offers businesses around the world. If you want to boost your productivity and knowledge in this area, you may want to hire an expert Jira contractor to help your teams understand everything this powerful software can achieve.

At ClearHub, we can help you find the right Jira, contractor for your business, with built-in technical support and our guarantee that they have the skills to get the job done. Click here to find out more about our guarantee.

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The 3 types of contractors – and why you should hire them through ClearHub

team of contractors
team of contractors

The 3 types of contractors – and why you should hire them through ClearHub

Do you want to hire software contractors, but don’t know where to start? You’re not alone. Research reveals that most tech firms use contract workers to meet 40 to 50 percent of their staffing needs.

Whether you need to fill a skills gap or just need  short-term help for a specific project, a contractor can bring many benefits to your business. For starters, they are often a more cost-effective option, compared to permanent hire, as you don’t have to provide any workplace benefits and usually work with them in the short-term. Plus, they can bring in a level of expertise into your organization to boost your business processes and projects or train up your staff.

However, not all contractors are the same, and many businesses struggle to find quality candidates with the right IT skills and experience.

At ClearHub, we understand that you need to ensure that whoever fills your role can complete the tasks assigned to them as efficiently as possible, providing you with good value for money and a guaranteed level of expertise.

That’s why every contractor we work with is technically tested by an industry expert in the skills that are important to you, so you can be sure they can get the job done. If, for any reason, you’re not happy with a contractor, we’ll find a replacement quickly and at no additional cost to your business. Plus, we offer Platinum Partner level technical support to our contractors. We’re proud to offer this level of support to contractors and organisations alike – it’s what sets us apart from the competition, and is the core reason we’ve bene in business for 20+ years.

We work with a range of specialist IT contractors, focusing on the following areas and addressing the following business requirements:

Atlassian Contractors: If you need to improve communication at your organisation

Atlassian’s extensive suite of tools help teams work smarter, helping companies run their communications as smoothly and efficiently as possible. However, Atlassian is a complex platform, and its usage often grows beyond individual teams, spanning entire organisations thanks to the benefits it provides.

As such, many businesses need to find an expert or number of experts to provide support within managing Atlassian tools.

Most businesses need Atlassian contractors that can help in one of the following three areas: to set up a new platform, manage your existing platforms and train your staff to use these platforms.

At ClearHub, we hire certified contractors with a range of specialist Atlassian knowledge, including expert Jira and Confluence contractors.

Did you know that the average large organisation tracks 1.4 million issues through a single Jira instance? Our Jira contractors can help you:

  • Set up your Jira software, exploring your business needs and working with you to develop workflows to support your IT teams.
  • Manage your existing Jira deployment, helping you find a better way for your IT teams to manage incidents. For example, you could hire a software contractor to manage the maintenance of your workflows, permissions, issue types and so on.
  • Train your teams to understand how to use Jira in the most effective manner. Whether you need basic training or helping your staff understand a specific feature, your contractor will make sure everyone is making the most out of Jira.

Confluence is a collaboration wiki tool to help teams share knowledge efficiently. Our Confluence contractors can help you:

  • Set up your Confluence wiki and/or migrate your existing intranet portal to ensure it has the information and functionality you need.
  • Manage your existing Confluence wiki. They can, for example, restructure your architecture, index your documentation, manage user permissions and install plugins.
  • Train and mentor your stakeholders, instilling best practices so you can make the most of the functionality.Agile Contractors: If you need to streamline your projects to deliver on time and on budget

Agile principles can help you deliver your products quickly and efficiently. However, instilling an agile culture in your workplace can be difficult. So, many organisations decide to bring in external agile experts to spearhead this transformation. At ClearHub, we work with a range of Agile experts, including:

  • Agile coaches: to help you rethink and change the ways you go about your development process, addressing issues such as workflow practices and team collaboration.
  • Scrum masters: to help team members understand and use the values and principles of agile development.
  • Agile project managers: to plan, lead, organise and motivate agile teams, delivering projects on time and on budget.

DevOps Contractors: If you want to foster innovation and collaboration

A DevOps approach effectively assimilates your development and operations teams to improve collaboration. Research reveals that companies that adopt this way of working deliver software quickly, reliably and safely.

However, there is a massive skills shortage in this area, and many organisations are struggling to find the specialist skills required to fill their roles. At ClearHub, we can help you take your DevOps to the next level and work with experts including:

  • DevOps engineers: from infrastructure and automation to scripting, we have a broad range of skill sets in our network of contractors to help you bring momentum and expertise to your project.
  • DevOps managers: to help you develop a DevOps strategy that is aligned with resilience, cost and performance in mind.
  • Cloud engineers: our CloudOps engineers can setup, configure and integrate your systems so everything runs smoothly in the cloud.

In Conclusion

At ClearHub, we have 20+ years of experience matching the right contractor to the right project. We’ve helped organisations find highly motivated and skilled contractors to meet the demands of their business requirements. As a result, those organisations have got products to market faster and improved their efficiency.

If you decide to hire an Atlassian, agile or DevOps contractor with us, our guarantee and expertise in the recruitment field take the risk out of this process. If you’d like to find out more about how we work, please contact one of the team today.

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