Top 5 New Add-ons for Atlassian JIRA – Second Quarter 2016
This year we’ve already published our traditional top 5 selection of add-ons for JIRA of the first quarter of 2016.
Why traditional?
Find out for yourself by checking our rating for 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th quarters of 2015. Also, you might be interested in our recent similar reviews for Dev Tools and Confluence.
In this post, as usual, we’ll tell you about the features of the chosen top 5 add-ons that were released on the Marketplace in the 2nd quarter of 2016, about their pricing and benefits for potential users. In our opinion, from a great variety of new add-ons the most interesting are:
- Actionables for JIRA by Spartez
- Backbone Issue Sync for JIRA by K15t Software GmbH
- BigTemplate by SoftwarePlant
- Smart Checklists by Railsware
- Structure.Pages for JIRA and Confluence by ALM Works
Now let’s take a closer look at each of these add-ons.
1. Actionables
Actionables add-on allows you to assign or receive some small tasks from your team mates right in issue comments. This frees you from the need to set an individual task every time an idea to do something occurs in the discussion of the project. You just need to mention a colleague using # instead of @ before his/her name with a short task description. It’s an awesome time-saver, I’m telling you.
In order to you not to get lost in the stream of your references and tasks via Actionables, guys from Spartez have added a special Actionables Checkbox icon to the JIRA menu. With this icon you can always view a list of all your incoming (adressed to you) and outgoing (adressed to someone by you) tasks.
In addition, every time someone mentions you via Actionables you’re getting an email-notification.
Pricing: One more good news about this add-on – it’s free for Server instances. So you can try it right now to make sure of its all advantages we told above. To summarize, Actionables is a great tool for setting small tasks and simple tracking of their realization.
2. Backbone Issue Sync
K15t Software GmbH – Atlassian Verified vendor – developed a tool that helps synchronize JIRA projects even across borders. And the name of this tool is Backbone Issue Sync add-on for JIRA Cloud and JIRA Server. You can create integrations between different JIRA instances right in Project Administration settings. Note that you can synchronize even JIRA Server with JIRA Cloud. The menu of synchronized projects looks like this.
Then you can choose issue type mapping between two JIRA instances.
Here you can also configure comments, attachments, field and workflow mapping settings. Now when you create a task in the first JIRA instance the same task appears in the second JIRA instance. And vice versa. So the users of both JIRA instances could track the tasks progress, edit them, add comments, attachments and so on.
I think that’s a really useful tool when you need to work together on some project with another department of your company or another company at all. So Backbone Issue Sync add-on removes the b2b and departments borders. And doing it with total privacy control.
Pricing: The price of Backbone Issue Sync is:
- 5$/mo for 10 users, 10$/mo for 15 users and so on – for Cloud instances;
- 200$ for 10 users, 400$ for 25 users and so on – for Server instances.
3. BigTemplate
If you have ever used a default export document style in JIRA, you know that it looks rather formal and has some difficulty to edit. If you agree with this opinion – BigTemplate add-on from SoftwarePlant is definitely for you! The SoftwarePlant team created an add-on, that allows you to add, edit, delete and arrange export templates that will be visible in your JIRA tasks.
BigTemplate allows you to speed up, facilitate and diversify the routine paperwork in your company. It combines the ability to download templates in doc, docx, pdf formats, to assign different templates to different issues, download the templates, edit it and send by e-mail. Now each employee can ask and receive holidays, saving paper and his time 🙂
Besides you can customize all of the templates and upload them again with your changes. There are 2 possible settings for each template on how to embed specific fields into your documents – you can use the standard Styles feature, or a # sign. The differences are that if you use the Styles feature, you need to type some placeholder text, then select it and give it a style of “BT.task.duedate”, after that format the text. And when you use the “#” feature, you type #BT.task.duedate and format this however you like. So you can choose any of these features for each template type.
Pricing: The price of BigTemplate for JIRA Server is: 10$ for 10 users, 120$ for 25 users and so on. You can check it yourself and try the add-on.
4. Smart Checklists
Smart Checklists is a free add-on for JIRA Cloud. It helps you to structure all the steps of tasks’ implementation, divide tasks into items, or group them and mark their realization as you complete them. It’s a kind of organizer, built-in in your JIRA.
All of the steps and tasks of your work are displayed on the issue panel in the “Checklists” section. Also you can mark all your done steps and tasks in this section.
The add-on is simple to use. You can create and edit your checklists right in the Edit form of an issue by using special symbols:
- “-” – for opened task
- “+” – for closed task
- “#” – to create a new group of task
Pricing: The add-on is completely free for JIRA Cloud, which makes it even more attractive to use.
Smart Checklists is a great free and simple-to-use add-on for JIRA Cloud. This is a great portable organizer that after a little bit of setting up your JIRA will always be at your fingertips.
5. Structure.Pages
Structure.Pages is a handy JIRA-Confluence collaboration tool from an Atlassian Verified vendor – ALM Works. In case you like to work with JIRA & Confluence interfaces and features in one place without switching tabs – Structure.Pages is definitely your choice.
But be ready for some initial configuration. Only after that you can integrate your Confluence pages with all inbuilt features in JIRA issues. Also you need to install Structure add-on for Structure.Pages Helper in your Confluence. The last one is free, by the way. If you do everything right, your Confluence Integration Settings will get an Enabled Status.
And what will you get after all of these actions?
Well, now you can view, track and manage everything from requirements to tasks and documentation. Structure.Pages also allows you to edit Confluence pages right inside Structure, keep pages from different spaces together. And all of that in one window, for each issue, with all editing capabilities and settings from JIRA & Confluence at the same time.
Pricing: The price of Structure.Pages for JIRA Server is: 10$ for 10 users, 300$ for 25 users, 550$ for 50 users and so on. For this price you’ll get a really wide range of opportunities for integrating your JIRA and Confluence.
But enough talking! You can try it for free to see it in action.
