In the previous chapters, we looked at how to use JIRA Agile to run and manage projects with both Scrum and Kanban. In this chapter, we will look into some of the additional customization capabilities of JIRA Agile, as well as integrating with other systems to provide a complete end-to-end experience for you and your team.
By the end of the chapter, you will have learned how to:
- Customize Agile Cards for your board
- Run parallel sprints
- Display and share project information with dashboard
- Create and link epics to requirement pages
- Create user stories from requirement pages
- Display sprints on calendars
- Capture sprint meeting notes
- Share reports on project progress
- Print out your Agile Cards and pin them onto a physical board
JIRA Agile displays issues and tasks as cards on your Scrum and Kanban boards. The default settings for a card contain just enough information, such as summary and assignee, to let users know what each card is talking about. JIRA Agile allows you to further customize how the Agile Cards should be displayed for each individual board, including its color and additional fields to display.
You might have noticed that different cards have different color bars on their left-hand sides. By default, colors are assigned based on the card's issue type. JIRA Agile has four options to decide how color should be assigned to cards: Issue Types, Priorities, Assignees, and Queries.
With the first three options, JIRA Agile will automatically detect the available options based on your current board's setup. For example, if you select Priorities, JIRA Agile will list all the priority values available in the system, and all you have to do is select a color for each priority.
The Queries option is the most flexible option, where you can define any number of colors and use JQL queries as the condition. For example, you can assign colors to cards based on the issue's due dates, red if the issue needs to be finished in the next 24 hours, and green if it is not due until next week. This way, when you look at the board, you get an indicator of each issue's urgency in relation to time. To customize card color, perform the following:
- Browse to the board you want to customize card colors for.
- Click on the Configure option from the Board menu.
- Select the Card colors option from the left panel.
- Choose how you want to assign colors from the Colors based on select list.
- Select the color for each criterion by clicking on the color box.
As shown in the following screenshot, we are assigning colors based on Queries, and all issues that are due within 1 day will have their cards shown in red, with the JQL query of duedate <= "1d":
Once you have customized the color settings for your card, the changes will be applied immediately. The following screenshot shows the result of a board with customized color cards:
By default, each card shows only basic information about the task, such as its summary, assignee, and priority. This is usually enough for most cases of usage, however, if you have customized your JIRA instance, especially with custom fields, you might want to also display that information on the card.
JIRA Agile lets you add up to three additional fields on the Agile Cards, including custom fields. However, since the on-screen real estate is still limited, you need to make sure not to add fields such as description, which can make the card hard to read. To customize the card layout, perform the following steps:
- Browse to the board you want to customize cards for.
- Click on the Configure option from the Board menu.
- Select the Card layout option from the left panel.
- Choose the field you want to add from the Field Name list and click on the Add button.
Since you can only add a maximum of three fields, as soon as you have selected three fields to add, JIRA Agile will remove the Field Name select list automatically. Until you remove a field from the list, as we can see in the following screenshot, under the Active sprints section, the Field Name list is no longer available.
Also note that there are two sections, Backlog and Active sprints on the Card layout page. JIRA Agile lets you set two different sets of fields, so you have the flexibility to show different fields when issues are in backlog, and when they are moved into sprints:
As shown in the following screenshot, we have added two additional fields to our cards, Label (sample) and Components (Authentication, Database). For cards that do not have values for either of the two fields, the value None will be displayed, as in the case of issue SKP-18:
In the previous section, we looked at how to customize the layout of cards by adding additional fields. JIRA Agile also lets you customize the issue's details view. The details view is the right-hand section when you select a card. By default, it will have all the default fields such as status and assignee. So, if you have any custom fields you would like to display, you will need to customize the view.
To customize the card details view, perform the following:
- Browse to the board you want to customize card details view for.
- Click the Configure option from the Board menu.
- Select the Issue Detail View option from the left panel.
- Add and remove fields for each view section.
As shown in the following screenshot, the configuration page is divided into several sections, corresponding to the actual details view panel. Each section can only have fields of compatible types. For example, only date-related fields can be added to the Date Fields section:
Once you have added or removed fields from the details view, whenever a user clicks on a card, the right-hand panel will reflect the change, as shown in the following screenshot, where we have removed the Labels, Component/s, and Affects Version/s fields, and added the Due Date field:
