What is Jira?
Jira is a suite of agile work management solutions that powers collaboration across all teams from concept to customer, empowering you to do the best work of your life, together. To do that, you need the best of best Jira Plugins. But before.. a little introduction to Atlassian company.
It was developed by an Australian company – Atlassian. The fun fact is that this interesting name comes from the Japanese word “Gojira” which means “Godzilla”. And when you think about it, Jira is kinda Godzilla, because it has over 5 000 plugins. They are also called add-ons or apps.
If you don’t know Atlassian’s products yet, then read our previous article to find out about the origin of the company name, the main products with their characteristics and how to start using them.
Jira can help agile teams with:
- Planning;
- Assigning;
- Tracking;
- Reporting;
- Managing;
- Integrating team.
Basic Plugins
Some of Jira Plugins are totally free, some at a small charge. Each one is extremely helpful, so it would be reckless not to use them. The basic Jira add-ons consist of:
You can add to-do lists to each issue and see what things still need to be done. It helps to split tasks into sections.
You and members of your team can track time, which is easy to use. It’s also possible to group & categorize the display of hours by many options in order to create different issues.
It’s not just one of the planning methods. Agile Poker is an innovative and interactive mode. The team rate, discuss and then set the estimation accuracy. Highly recommended for Scrum teams.
You can organize your issues and plan them in a modern way.
The most useful Plugins
The part of most useful Plugins, based on type and number of installations are:
This add-on stays on the #1 place of time management products in the Atlassian ecosystem since 2010. As the Team Manager, you can get detailed information about your team’s timesheets. By that, you can also track the tempo of each project and issue.
Connect your Google Drive files with Jira issues. It can be the end of links.
You can combine Jira with the interdisciplinary skills of Excel.
The best Plugins
From among the best apps based on selling score, we can point out:
It’s the best-rated & complete automation solution for Jira. You can easily create issues and sub-tasks, add comments and control transitions to be a workflow champ.
Turn chaos into clarity with an easy-to-use hierarchy of your issues.
Create easy-to-build and beautiful custom charts, reports and dashboards. It looks good and is easy to use at the same time. Reporting in Jira is important, so thanks to this app it can be easy for teams to visualize their data.
Basic Plugins for nonprofits
People working in nonprofit organizations have to face challenges on many grounds. They are also a large group of people, so they need suitable tools for managing a team and track the progress of their work.
In this part, we want to show you how you can improve the work of your nonprofit organization, but our examples are so universal that any kind of company or institution can use them. The truth is that thanks to Atlassian products every kind of collaboration can increase productivity and be more efficient.
If you wonder… Why Atlassian? – the answer is pretty simple. Many of their products are completely free and others with big discounts for NGOs.
We want to recommend a few Plugins that we think might be especially helpful for you.
You can easily generate your timesheet reports based on worklogs.
Manage big task lists without subtasks and then track issue progress through checklist status.
You and your team can collaborate on issues together as easily as if you were in the same room. The best for teams working remotely.
How to choose the best Plugins for your team?
Firstly, you have to think about the specific aspects of your company/institution. The most important facets are the size of your organization, course of work (remote/in-office) and what you actually need to work on.
When you already know the answers to these questions then you can search specific plugins. It’s important to consider the reputation of plugin developers and their other apps, for example by looking at reviews and the number of installations. It decreases the risk of choosing an amateur product, which can be insufficient for you.
On Atlassian Marketplace you can sort plugins by:
- Top rated;
- Top selling;
- Top trending;
- Newest.
Sorting through these options it’s easy to avoid disappointment, keep it professional and don’t waste time on testing plugins.
If you have questions or anything that is bothering you about Jira, you can ask us in a direct message or look through other articles on this topic.
