JIRA 4 Essentials

352 Pages·2011·20.712 MB·English

by  P. Li

JIRA 4 Essentials
Track bugs, issues, and manage your software
development projects with JIRA
Patrick Li
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
JIRA 4 Essentials
Copyright © 2011 Packt Publishing
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First published: May 2011
Production Reference: 1160511
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
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ISBN 978-1-849681-72-8
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Cover Image by Artie Ng ([email protected])
Credits
Author Project Coordinator
Patrick Li Vishal Bodwani
Reviewers Proofreader
Matthew B. Doar Josh Toth
Stafford Vaughan
Marcin Zręda Indexers
Monica Ajmera Mehta
Rekha Nair
Acquisition Editor
Amey Kanse
Graphics
Geetanjali Sawant
Development Editor
Alina Lewis
Production Coordinators
Alwin Roy
Technical Editor
Kavita Iyer Arvindkumar Gupta
Copy Editor Cover Work
Neha Shetty Alwin Roy
Arvindkumar Gupta
About the Author
Patrick Li is a senior engineer at AppFusions, the leading Atlassian partner
specializing in delivering Enterprise 2.0 solutions for clients in the United States,
UK, Australia, and Hong Kong.
He has worked in the Atlassian ecosystem for over four years, developing solutions
for Atlassian products and providing expert consulting services. He is one of the top
contributors to the Atlassian community, providing answers and suggestions on the
Atlassian user forum.
He has extensive experience in designing and deploying Atlassian solutions from the
ground up, as well as customizing existing deployments for clients across verticals
like Healthcare, Software Engineering, Financial Services, and Government Agencies.
I would like to thank my family, especially my wife Katherine, who
has been very supportive during all this time. I would also like to
thank everyone who has edited and reviewed the book.
About the Reviewers
Matt Doar first discovered JIRA while writing Practical Development Environments
(O’Reilly, 2005). Since then, his company Consulting Toolsmiths has helped dozens
of organizations to use JIRA the way they want to. He is also the author of a number
of significant plugins in the Atlassian Plugin Exchange.
Before that, he was a software toolsmith and developer for a number of networking
companies in Northern California. He has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the
University of Cambridge.
I’d like to thank my dear children Elizabeth, Jacob, and Lucas for all
their questions and my beloved wife Katherine for her patience with
my answers. I think it’s for my family that God has established the
work of my hands (Psalm 90:17).
Stafford Vaughan started using JIRA in 2005 after getting a Software Engineering
degree in Australia and joining CustomWare, Atlassian’s leading services partner.
He is a founding author of Atlassian’s official JIRA training course materials. During
his four years as the Atlassian Training Manager, Stafford worked with many
Fortune 500 companies, government entities, and universities, including NASA,
Intel, Stanford University, The Pentagon, Wells Fargo, and The United Nations.
Stafford currently lives in San Francisco and provides training for organizations in
and around Silicon Valley.
Marcin Zręda specializes in business analysis and quality assurance. He has many
years of experience as a programmer and designer. He is the author of many articles
on JIRA and the owner of the testandtry.com blog. Has implemented JIRA for
many departments that have more than 600 employees. He is currently directing the
department of business analysis in a large international company.
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Table of Contents
Preface 1
Chapter 1: Getting started with JIRA 7
JIRA architecture 7
High-level architecture 8
Browsers 8
Application services 9
Data storage 9
JIRA installation directory 9
JIRA home directory 10
Installation options 10
Standalone and WAR-EAR distributions 11
Operating systems 11
Databases 11
Application Servers 12
Installing JIRA 13
Installing Java 14
Installing MySQL 15
Configuring MySQL 16
Installing JIRA 18
Configuring JIRA application properties 18
Configuring JIRA application settings (optional) 18
Configuring HTTPS 19
Installing database drivers (optional) 21
Configuring the database connection manual 22
Configuring the database connection (GUI) 24
Configuring JIRA as a Windows service 25
Starting JIRA 26
Summary 30
Table of Contents
Chapter 2: Project Management 31
JIRA hierarchy 31
Project category 31
Projects 32
Issues 32
Fields 33
JIRA projects 33
Project browser 33
Summary tab 35
Issues tab 36
Road Map tab 36
Change Log tab 36
Versions/Components tabs 36
Source/Reviews tabs 37
Project management 37
Creating projects 38
Editing projects 39
Deleting projects 40
Project administration 40
Components 42
Creating components 43
Editing components 43
Deleting components 43
Selecting the default assignee 44
Versions 45
Creating versions 46
Editing versions 47
Deleting versions 47
Project configurations 48
Issue types 48
Creating issue types 49
Editing issue types 50
Deleting issue types 50
Priorities 50
Creating priorities 52
Editing priorities 52
Deleting priorities 52
Arranging priorities 53
Resolutions 53
Creating resolutions 55
Editing resolutions 55
Deleting resolutions 55
Arranging resolutions 56
[ ii ]
Table of Contents
Schemes 56
Issue type scheme 56
Notification scheme 58
Permission scheme 58
Issue security scheme 58
Field configuration scheme 58
Screen scheme 58
Issue type screen scheme 59
Workflow scheme 59
Help Desk project 59
Creating a new project category 59
Creating a new project 60
Creating new priorities 60
Creating new resolutions 61
Creating issue types 61
Creating an issue type scheme 63
Creating new components 64
Creating new versions 64
See it in action 65
Summary 67
Chapter 3: Issue Management 69
What an issue looks like 69
Creating an issue 71
Editing an issue 72
Deleting an issue 73
Moving an issue between projects 73
Casting vote on an issue 75
Receiving notifications about issues 76
Re-assigning issues to others 77
Issues and comments 78
Adding comments 78
Managing your comments 79
Creating a Permalink 79
Attachments 80
Enabling attachments in JIRA 80
Attaching files 81
Attaching screenshots 82
Sub-tasks 83
Enabling sub-tasks 83
Creating sub-tasks 84
Issue linking 85
Enabling issue linking 85
[ iii ]