Category: Atlassian Marketplace

How to automatically add checklists to your Jira issue – step by step guide

Multiple Checklists for Jira- Managing

Automatically add checklists to each new Jira issue. This is the desired functionality

One typical use case is having the “Definition of Done” available by default in each new issue, to make sure that either developers or testers take time to verify if the task is done by the definition the team agreed to follow. Another common case is tracking whether the ticket is ready for development. That may include making sure the bugs have reproduction steps included or that new features have acceptance criteria. The thing about all those mentioned situations is that they all concern universal requirements that apply to the majority of the tasks you and your team face.

You have to stand up to these standards because you want to deliver the highest quality service or product, of course. Still, human memory is faulty which makes it hard to remember every single step on your path to success (or “Done” if you prefer).

Wouldn’t it be great if after entering your Jira issue, you could see right away the complete list of criteria that you have to fulfill?

This guide explains step by step how to achieve this with Multiple Checklists for Jira – an Atlassian Marketplace app available for Jira Cloud and Jira Server.

 

Get your checklist template ready

Enter any of your Jira issues and start working on your checklist items. Once you are happy with the results, click the “Save as template” button next to the checklist.

You will be prompted to enter a unique name for the template. Once you have done so, just click “Save” and your template will be saved. Don’t worry, you can always edit the template later on, by adding more items, editing existing ones, reordering them, or deleting.

 

Go to manage templates view

You can access template management either directly from any Jira issue, through Multiple Checklists for Jira options, or via Jira Settings, provided you are the instance administrator.

The screen allows you to edit and delete the existing templates, as well as assign them to be automatically added to the newly created issues. The last one is only available if you administer at least one project on the given Jira instance.

Assign templates by project and issue type

Provided you are a project admin or Jira instance admin, you can select “Assign to projects” next to the template name, which will display a list of all projects you administer.

You can then select specific issue types for each of those projects, that will have the selected template automatically added as a checklist to each created issue of those types.

You can also opt to have the checklists added automatically to all of the issues created within the given project, by selecting the “Select all” checkbox, next to the issue types.

 

Multiple Checklists for Jira - select_projects_types3

 

Test it out!

That was it. You should be all set.

Now go ahead and create a new issue to see if everything works as expected. If you cannot see any new checklist added, go back to the template management view and make sure that you have selected the correct project and issue types.

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How to configure custom checklists statuses in Jira

Setting checklists statuses in Jira truly help in communicating at which phase of a task’s completion we currently are, which supports transparency significantly

 

Not all things are either black or white, and the same story goes for Jira issues. If your only options were to mark the assignment either done or merely not, it wouldn’t speak the whole truth about how a workflow for a task looks like, wouldn’t it?

Now, why should it be any different in the case of smaller Jira tasks,  such as checklist items? It might get quite frustrating when the time spent on a troubling item increases, but you still can’t let your team know that it is ready.

With Multiple Checklists for Jira, you won’t encounter this problem ever again. The most recent feature added to the app is the ability to set custom statuses to the items in your checklists.

From now on, you can let others know that the item is in progress, blocked or N/A so that every party involved is on the same page. Besides these default statuses, you can come up with your own to ensure that the communication over items fits your unique workflow best.

Sometimes though simplicity is a virtue, you want to preserve. That is why you can always switch off the statuses, and put it back on once needed.

Read through this short guide to find out how to take the best advantage of item statuses in Multiple Checklists for Jira. We hope it will allow you to stay informed and to keep your team updated at all times!

As a Jira Administrator go to Jira Settings – Apps – Checklists – Checklist item statuses. This will display a list of all the currently configured checklist item statuses. From here, you can decide to edit any of the existing statuses, delete them, or add a brand-new one. You can also choose to disable checklist item statuses altogether what will stop displaying them next to the items and will also hide the ability to select the current status. See the picture below for a comparison between enabled checklist item statuses and disabled checklist item statuses.

Multiple Checklists DoD - DoD

 

Multiple Checklists for Jira ships with three default statuses: IN PROGRESS, BLOCKED, and N/A. Each of them can be edited or deleted as needed, or new ones can be added.

Multiple Checklists item statuses

For each of the existing statuses, administrators can configure its name, color, and the effect that the status has on the completeness of the checklist item. The color helps your users better understand the meaning of the status. For example, blue usually indicates that something is in progress in Jira, while green suggests that something has been finished. You can give your statuses any name you like and assign them any color you wish.

The last option – “Item state” – is used to specify what happens once the given status is selected. The checkbox for the item can either be checked or unchecked with the selection of the status. As an example, items with the status “Not applicable” can be automatically marked as checked, so that the whole checklists show up as finished, even if there are items that are marked “Not applicable”.

Administrators can also choose to delete any of the statuses. If an item is deleted it will no longer be available as an option for users. All checklist items that had the status assigned will have that status cleared. Please note that this action is irreversible. You can of course always add a new status with the same name again, but this won’t restore the status of the items that had it when it was deleted.

When checklist item statuses are enabled, users can assign a status to each of the checklist items. Only one status can be assigned per checklist item. Users will only be able to pick status from the list of defined statuses, that can be edited as explained above. The status can be selected and displays next to the item. Moreover, upon the status selection, the checkbox will also be appropriately updated, as set in the config. In our example, the N/A status is meant to mark the item as completed.

Multiple Checklists DoD gif

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Blocking Jira issue transitions when checklist items are not completed – step by step guide

Using the well-organized and properly maintained checklist in the Jira issue can help your team invaluably while struggling to manage and distribute tasks effectively

 

As with everything in this prone-to-forgetting universe, some crucial tasks that must be completed before marking a given issue as “done” will be forgotten once in a while. As you probably know, even the most detailed and thought through plan means little if not executed due to the faulty of human memory.

With this guide, you will hopefully avoid such a dark fate. It explains how to use Jira issue transition validator, delivered with Multiple Checklists for Jira. Validator ensures that nobody will be able to move an issue to a selected status unless all the checklists’ items are complete.

 

1. Go to the workflow configuration for the selected project

Please note that only the Jira project administrators are able to change workflow configuration and therefore add issue transition validators. If you have the necessary rights, you can find the workflow configuration page in the project settings on the left-hand menu. Go there and click the pencil icon next to the workflow scheme assigned to your project and issue types you want to configure validators for.

 

 

2. Select appropriate issue transition

Issue transitions are represented by arrows from one ticket status to another. For example, you can have a transition from the “To Do” status to “Done”, as well as a transition from the “In Progress” status to “Done”. Once you have clicked on the transition you want to add validation for, click on the “Validators”.

 

 

3. Select the checklists validator

From the list of all available validators, select the “All checklist items are checked”. That’s all you need to do! Simply click “Add” and your new validator will be added to the selected transition.

 

 

4. Repeat for the remaining transitions

Make sure to repeat the above steps for all the transitions that are meant to be protected. If there are multiple transitions that lead to the “Done” status, and you want to make sure that no issue is moved to “Done” if checklist items are not completed, you should configure the validation for each of those transitions.

 

5. Save the workflow scheme

Once you have added the checklist validators to all the transitions you wanted to, one step that remains is to publish the workflow scheme. To do so, click on the “Publish Draft” above the workflow diagram.

 

6. Test it out

Once the adjusted workflow is published, the transitions that had the validator added will not be possible until all checklist items are marked as completed. This won’t affect issues that don’t have any checklists added or that don’t use checklists. Try it out yourself! Add a checklist with some items, and try to move an issue through a transition that is protected with a validator! It should work very similar to the below.

 

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How can Multiple Checklist for Jira help my business?

Quality control is a major issue for software teams, and a simple solution for making sure everyone is always following the same steps is to include a checklist in your Jira issues. Whether you are preparing a software release, fixing a bug, or defining a user story, Multiple Checklists for Jira can help. By setting up templates for your recurring needs, such as a Definition of Done, or Definition of Ready, you can make sure everyone is following the same procedure.

You can set up a basic checklist with just two attributes (a tick box and a text field for the step to follow), and create multiple templates for your different teams.

Multiple Checklists for Jira is a great tool that introduces Jira checklists into Jira issues. Rather than using bullet lists within the issue description or subtasks, you can now easily add multiple, actionable Jira checklists and enhance your everyday workflow.

Use checklists in scrum and Kanban boards

As part of Agile, software development teams are recommended to display and monitor their activities on boards. Jira leverages scrum boards for the planning stage and kanban boards for the launched sprints.

By keeping both boards up-to-date and enforced with checklists, the agile team gets extra visibility into the product backlog, current tasks, job progress, blockers, team capacity, and other data.

 

Identify the definition of done (DoD) and acceptance criteria using checklists

When it comes to identifying the conditions for a product increment to be considered as ‘Done,’ the opinion of a product owner usually differs from those of a developer or a scrum master. So, to avoid misunderstandings and ensure only completed features are released, check feature readiness against the definition of done (DoD) and acceptance criteria checklists.

The team compiles a DoD list at the beginning of the sprint and integrates it into the existing Jira workflow for everyone to easily access. Before moving an issue to ‘Done,’ teammates check the list to make sure it’s actually complete.

Before a user story is delivered, a product owner must accept it. The acceptance criteria checklist is a list of business cases or conditions the product increment has to meet to be released.

 

Structure the working chaos with agile processes

Agile is an enormously popular methodology but is used differently everywhere because each team customizes it to fit its use case. Checklists allow teams to break up large tasks, monitor stages, create templates, and more. By introducing this simple tool in Jira, a company structures the working chaos and helps everyone see what needs to be done and when it is complete.

 

Try organizing your workflow with Multiple Checklists for Jira from the Atlassian Marketplace.

Make Work Easier for Your Team with Multiple Checklists For Jira

When it comes to enhancing productivity, few tools are as powerful as Jira. It’s the go-to suite for managing software projects, and the cool thing about it is that you can extend the power of Jira through additional apps.

 

One of these apps is Multiple Checklists For Jira. It’s simple in principle – it allows you to add checklists to your tasks, as a substitute for sub-tasks or an additional way to track progress and provide task guidelines.

 

Anyone who’s interested in productivity will know that a checklist is one of the best tools for streamlining work processes, and enabling yourself and your team to do more in a shorter amount of time.

 

Here’s how Multiple Checklists For Jira can be used to make your team’s work easier.

Maintain a healthy workflow and spend less time talking

Creative work, like programming, is never easy. What makes it even harder are never ending interruptions. 

 

Experts say that it takes about 15 minutes to refocus on what you were doing after being interrupted. The interruption can be as small as a Slack message about whether something is done. 

 

If one Slack message can cost a developer 15 minutes, think about how much time gets wasted when there’s too much back & forth communication in your team.

With Multiple Checklists for Jira, you can vastly reduce the amount of interrupting messages that disrupt your team’s work. 

 

Customizable item statuses (“done”, “in progress”, “blocked”, “waiting for approval”, etc) immediately show what’s going on with an item on the checklist. If an item is “blocked”, you can address it at the next meeting. If something is “done” or “in progress”, you don’t need to message the person responsible and disrupt their workflow only to ask about the status.

Another cool feature is history. By hovering over a checklist item, you can see when it was checked off, and by whom. No need to write @team messages to ask who finished that item. All the information you need is easily accessible.

Eliminate guesswork and avoid miscommunication

Long and cryptic task descriptions are not the ideal way to present information about a task. In the perfect situation, you want to provide just enough guidelines for someone to know exactly what they need to do. 

 

Any excess information contributes to miscommunication, and if there’s not enough information – your teammates will help to spend their time guessing what you meant.

 

Checklists are a good way to remove both miscommunication and guesswork from your team’s workflow. 

 

For example, think about Definition of Done. 

A checklist is the easiest way to make sure that a task meets all the requirements in the Definition of Done. 

 

One awesome feature of Multiple Checklists that comes in handy here is that you can make multiple Definition of Done checklist templates, and automatically assign them to specific types of issues.

 

You can make different DoD templates for issues like adding new features, making bug fixes, doing code review, refactoring code, and so on. Then, in the “Manage Templates” section of Multiple Checklists For Jira, you can assign these templates to the appropriate type of issues – and voila! All new issues of a given type will have your DoD template by default.

Streamline your process

Checklists are a powerful tool for optimizing your work process in a way that you always do only what’s necessary, without spending time on irrelevant work, or having to ask other people what to do.

 

Optimizing processes with checklists takes time and consistency, but it pays off immensely. In Atul Gawande’s book “The Checklist Manifesto”, the author describes multiple high-risk jobs where checklists ensure that people don’t forget crucial steps and avoid potentially life-threatening mistakes. Surgeons, or airplane pilots, use checklists all the time.

 

The difficulty is that it may be hard to convince your team to be consistent with their checklists, and put in the effort to think about how they could be better.

 

Working on checklists is not just the manager’s role, it’s the role of the whole team. This goes deep into your organizational culture. 

 

How do you make checklists work, and reap the benefits from streamlining your workflow with them? Every team member needs to understand how important checklists are – not just to their work, but to how the whole team operates.

 

Even more importantly, you need to have a culture of feedback. It will be hard to optimize your checklists if you, as a manager, are the only one who cares about what’s in them.

 

Encourage your team to discuss checklists, and suggest improvements. Over time, you and your team will arrive at the perfect versions of checklists that will make your daily tasks much easier.

Try Multiple Checklists For Jira and see how it helps your team

A lot of the features in Multiple Checklists are customizable, in the spirit of Jira, so how you use it may be different from the above examples. 

 

All in all, introducing checklists might be just what your teammates need to get to the next level of productivity. Try it out!

Go to the Multiple Checklists for Jira website, or go to “Apps -> Find new apps” in Jira, and search for “Checklists” – Multiple Checklists should be the first app that pops up.

6 Checklists’ features that improve work on Jira issues

Checklists are said to be the key to a successful transformation of any business. A simple solution for Jira that is surprisingly effective in making our lives simpler and our work more productive. Checklists features reduce errors and ensure consistency in carrying out tasks as well as help us remember important points and issues. They may contain any essential data regarding our accomplishments or plans. Due to their versatility, checklists can be beneficial in any industry.

As checklists are great tools to carry out compliance checks and collect data in an orderly and systematic manner, they prove themselves in a more complex workflow perfectly. Hence, they can be successfully used to organize development processes. Agile teams highly appreciate the implementation of lists as acceptance criteria solutions, the definition of done or progress tracking tools. They especially prefer to take advantage of checklists in project management tools such as Jira. This type of software is highly recommended keeping the workflow organized and enables the team to see other stuff present in the working environment.

Everyone using Jira realizes it is a phenomenally powerful project management software. However, there are occasions when it cannot be bent to meet our specific custom-functionality. If your company uses Jira to plan and track work, you surely come across issues including tasks to complete, often hidden among comments or impossible to understand because of endless descriptions. Yet breaking down an issue into Jira subtasks still may seem too complex.

Luckily, Jira’s greatest strength is the fact that it can be customized at every level. It has an enormous library of add-ons that offer almost any functionality one can think of. One of the newest apps in the Atlassian Marketplace is Multiple Checklists for Jira by SolDevelo. It allows you to break up bigger tasks, monitor stages and create useful templates. By introducing this tool in Jira, we aim to help you organize your work better and let all team members see what needs to be done and when it is complete.

Multiple Checklists for Jira are perfect for issues that need to be broken down into smaller steps. This app offers its users a bunch of capabilities including the creation of acceptance criteria, definition of done, and other To-Do lists. It helps in working on a particular task, divide tasks into items, and mark their realization as you complete them. It’s a kind of useful organizer, built-in in your JIRA, and at the same time our answer to a growing demand for implementing checklists within project management tools as an integral element of workflow organization.

With the help of Multiple Checklists for Jira, you can extend the features of Jira to build smart checklists that will enable your teams to get things done faster. Break down large tasks into smaller actionable items that are required to complete an issue. Everyone enjoys the feeling of marking a checkbox as done, don’t they?

Here are some ideas on how our app can improve teams’ work on Jira issues and empower them to save time and increase productivity:

Easily adding, editing and removing the work items

 

A checklist is a way of keeping track of subtasks within an issue. It ensures that all actions required to complete the issue are not forgotten and taken systematically. With Multiple Checklists for Jira, you can reorganize and reorder checklist items as necessary. When your work on a particular task is completed, delete the items that are no longer needed. You can simply tick off the things that are finished and get immediate insight into what still needs to be done.

 

Tracking who completed the tasks

Multiple Checklists for Jira enable project managers to control their team’s work as well as their employees’ productivity. One of the best things about this app is that it can help avoid confusing scenarios when a task is assigned to several employees. When you create one task and assign that task to a few different people, you can add a checklist to your task description for workload clarity. When an employee finishes their job, he or she should go to the checklist within the task to indicate that their portion of work is ready. When everyone has checked off their separate line items, a project manager knows everyone finished their job and the entire task is completed.

 

Instant visibility into what is completed vs what still needs to be done

When tasks have multiple components, it can be challenging tracking what has been completed versus what is still in progress. It is especially confusing when different segments must be completed by different people. Having all the segments written down as a checklist ensures that no team member misses a single point. Thanks to the dedicated progress bar you can track progress in each checklist. It gives you a clear overview of the tasks that have been done or that still need to be completed.

Easily re-using the checklists between the issues with templates

Thanks to Multiple Checklists for Jira you can save any checklist as a template and later modify and adjust it as needed. Working with templates is convenient. With little effort, you can prepare useful templates and upload them to any selected issues. It is a great solution for repetitive sets of tasks or requirements. That can save you a lot of energy, can’t it? It means that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time a task appears, and instead, you can follow something that was already developed before. For example, you can save the Definition of Done as a template, to re-use in any further issue. You can easily configure your project to have the Definition of Done checklist added to any created issue.

 

Automatically adding checklists to issues in the selected projects per issue types

Another great feature of our new app is assigning checklists templates to selected issue types within projects. It allows you to relieve your memory even more! Now the most universal checklists will always add automatically to newly created issues. You don’t believe it? Try and assign a definition of done will to your new issues based on a project and an issue type. You can as well automatically add your “Definition of Ready” checklist to each new issue in Jira and track the progress on getting them ready for development. All is set!

 

Managing multiple, named checklists in a single issue

 

Multiple Checklists for Jira allows you to create as many checklists in single issues as you need.  You can name or rename any checklist in the most suitable way so it is easily distinguishable and does not cause too much confusion. You can freely add and edit new checklists to an issue and retain a high level of organization in your to-dos. The only thing you have to do is to open an issue and start writing a checklist. It’s as simple as that, isn’t it?

 

We all know that overlooking one critical step in the project development process may prove damaging and harmful to the whole team. Checklists are the real saviors here! They help you become more productive because you don’t need to use time remembering the steps and as a result, you can dedicate all your time to doing the task. Multiple Checklists for Jira can be an alternative to subtasks that are not always suitable to use in a particular issue. Using our app can improve your performance and help you achieve more consistent results. With their help, you don’t miss the obvious in the frenzy of many things swirling around us in our workload.

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Tips to improve Jira Service Desk workflow with Multiple Checklists

Used together with Jira Service Desk, Multiple Checklists can improve your service team’s productivity and help provide better services to your customers

 

Whom do the customers contact first in case they have problems with the IT service they are using? A service desk of course!

It is the major contact point between the service provider and the users, ensuring high-quality assistance in a timely manner. The main goal of each service desk is to solve problems in a few efficient steps and enable the integration of various processes into the service management infrastructure.

 

How do service desk teams work

Service desks are on the frontline when it comes to providing users with support. In order to do it efficiently, they have to follow certain procedures that are a useful roadmap for day-to-day operations.

We all know what service desks’ purpose is – namely, managing both service requests and incidents. While the former is rather quickly solvable (as they often mean e.g. helping a user to change a password or to set up work system), the latter may result in disruptions in service availability or quality. It is up to the service desk to decide if the issue is strictly an incident or just a request. The correct identification is the key to a successful outcome but it also entails different handling of the issue. The requests, which are usually smaller or low risk, will be dealt with differently than incidents and will fall under the request fulfillment process. The issues identified as incidents (either high or low impact) are logged as tickets.

The service desk is, of course, the place where customers come to find every service they need. That’s why in order to answer all questions and requests correctly, IT teams have to cooperate closely with other departments (like legal, finance or HR) as well. And it is this ticket variety that may be of an even greater challenge than incoming ticket volume.

 

Jira Service Desk to make life easier

 

Jira Service Desk logo

 

In order to improve service desks’ effectiveness and customer satisfaction, Atlassian designed Jira Service Desk, a fully-featured management tool for self-service, SLA (service level agreement) tracking and collaboration. One of its greatest advantages is a simple request form that allows customers to submit requests, customized depending on the request type. As Jira Service Desk is built on the Jira platform, it is of great use for companies already using Jira products. What is more, it allows easy connections between teams of various specialties (support staff, engineers, developers, and business teams). Additionally, it can be integrated with other Atlassian products, such as Jira Core, Jira Software or Confluence.

 

Having said all that, it is easy to see that Jira Service Desk is a well-designed tool aimed at helping companies to reach more prospects, improve the quality of their service and – as a result – maximize return on investments. However, it is not free of a few drawbacks that can cause some inconveniences to its users. There are some features that you would think would come right out of the box – but yet, they do not. The best way to get them is via the Atlassian Marketplace.

 

Multiple Checklists for better workflows

 

Multiple Checklists + logotyp

 

Multiple Checklists for Jira by SolDevelo is a smart app that proves great when it comes to organizing work on a particular task. It allows you to split tasks into actionable checklists to always stay on top of your to-do lists. So it seems quite natural that it might be of great use in your service desks processes – simply by keeping your IT team on track with goals. Used together with Jira Service Desk, Multiple Checklists can improve your service team’s productivity and help provide better services to your customers.

Above, we have mentioned all the default Jira Service Desk issue types. It is true they all have their own defined workflows – meaning a set of statuses and transitions that an issue moves through during its lifecycle. Multiple Checklists for Jira allow for accelerating these workflows and remove repetitive tasks your IT team has to deal with. Want to speed up your service desk teamwork on those issues as well as to improve customer experience using your service desks?

Do not hesitate and use some of our tips below!

 

Enhancing Jira Service Desk in a few steps

Different issue types – different checklists

Customers can raise different request types in Jira Service Desk. They can be put into groups to help customers find the request type they need more quickly.

Multiple Checklists allow you to employ checklists templates and make them appear in newly created issues of the selected type. Use issue types to automatically assign different checklists to different request types. Customer requests related to billing could have a different checklist added than the ones referring to e.g. proposed enhancements.

 

Indicating the status of customer requests

Multiple Checklists for Jira - Bug reports

Multiple Checklists for Jira come with three default statuses: IN PROGRESS, BLOCKED, and N/A (Not Applicable). Each of them can be edited or deleted as needed, or new ones can be added.

 

Use N/A or BLOCKED statuses to clearly indicate the status of the customer request. Not all of the checklist items will always be valid for the case the customer is providing. You can use N/A to clearly indicate the latter  – BLOCKED can be employed for items that are awaiting the development team or the customer.

 

Accessing knowledge base materials

Jira Service Desk (when integrated with Confluence) provides comprehensive documentation users can read to help themselves before reaching out to the service desk team. To simplify the access to these knowledge base materials, use links in checklist items. Links are automatically parsed in checklist items, thanks to which the access to any external and internal resources is made easier.

 

Easily share responsibilities with other departments

Multiple Checklists for Jira - Add a ToDo

With Jira Service Desk, add a ‘TO DO’ list for another department. Sometimes a customer request might require the involvement of another department. Clearly articulate those tasks as checklist items so that there’s no need to browse through countless comments in the service desk request. You can get feedback and confirmation once all is done.

 

Conclusion

Jira Service Desk is a great support tool but it works even better when it is enhanced with Multiple Checklists for Jira by SolDevelo. The great advantage of such a solution is that all the tips we have given here are relatively easy to implement. Thanks to these applicable pieces of advice, you will be able to optimize your service desk and meet both your own needs and those of your customers.

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