From the course: Complete Guide to Jira Administration: Configuration, Management, and Automation

Workflow overview - Jira Tutorial

From the course: Complete Guide to Jira Administration: Configuration, Management, and Automation

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Workflow overview

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- A workflow is a visual representation of a repeatable process. Workflows contain a sequence of standard steps that each issue must go through to be completed. You probably leverage workflows all the time without thinking about it. Think about the process of baking a cake, for example. A cake has predictable steps to complete before you can eat it. You must gather the ingredients, preheat the oven, mix the ingredients, and bake the cake before it's ready to serve. You can certainly skip the preheating step, but if you do, the cake might not bake thoroughly, rise properly, or turn out as expected. Having a standard repeatable process helps ensure a successful result. In Jira you can have multiple workflows for different teams and use cases. We'll explore some examples so you can understand the differences and modify them to meet your organization's needs. Let's get started by defining some basic workflow related terms. Each step of the process is represented by a status which describes an issue's current state. Transitions are used to move issues forward or backward in the process. Workflow transitions have what I call behaviors. Atlassian sometimes calls these rules or workflow extensions. These specify what happens in the background when issues transition from one status to another, and finally, a property is a key value pair used to further customize statuses and transition behavior. All workflows have the following attributes, a unique name to identify it, an optional description, and a state which is either active, inactive, or draft. Workflows provide a way for users to indicate real-time progress on individual issues. They provide a standard and consistent path to follow to create a visual flow chart so users know what's been done and what comes next. Different workflows are often built based on the type of work. There are simple task workflows, development workflows, support workflows, and other workflows for custom processes in your organization. When you create a new Jira project, Jira automatically creates a new workflow for it. If the default workflow doesn't meet your business needs, you can create a custom one. Jira comes with some prebuilt default workflows that you can use as is or customize, and of course, you can create your own custom workflows as well. Let's go to the workflows admin area. To view an example. To access workflows, click the cog or gear icon at the top right and select the issues option in the menu. Then click the workflows link in the left sidebar. Just like other admin pages, the button to create new objects is at the top right. The list of objects is below, and each item has actions to perform on the right. This page has an additional element I wanted to mention. There's a tab for active workflows and another tab for inactive workflows. In server and data center, inactive workflows are shown in an expandable section at the bottom of the page. There are three different workflow states to be aware of, active, inactive, and draft. An active workflow is currently used by one or more projects. You can't delete an active workflow. To delete, you must make the workflow inactive by removing it from any projects using it. An inactive workflow isn't used by any projects because they aren't currently used, there are no limitations. You can edit or delete them as desired. The third stage is draft. When you edit an active workflow, a draft is created. That way, there's no impact to any Jira projects until the draft is published. When you publish a draft, Jira will help you migrate existing issues to new statuses if needed. Here's an example of a workflow with an unpublished draft. Click the ellipsis icon on the right to edit the workflow. Then you can publish or discard the draft. Now let's explore some of our workflows. If I click the ellipsis button for an active workflow, I see the options, view, edit and copy. The view option shows a read only version of the active workflow. The edit option automatically creates a draft copy of the workflow, so only click that if you really plan on making changes, and of course, the copy option creates a second inactive version of the workflow. There's no delete option because you can't delete an active workflow. In the inactive tab, the options are edit, copy, and delete. Here's what the screen looks like when viewing an active workflow. You can confirm the state of the workflow using information at the top of the page. There's a lozenge that says Active and account of projects currently using the workflow. Click on the count to see the specific project list. You can also tell you're viewing an active workflow because there's an edit button at the top right. Lower on the page are different workflow viewing and editing modes. Diagram mode is selected by default. Here are the visual differences between diagram mode and text mode. It's important to know that these images show the exact same workflow. The information is just displayed differently, and you can use either. Each mode has pros and cons. Diagram mode is the simplest and easiest view. It's also closest to the view end users see. This mode includes a visual workflow designer, which lets you add statuses or transitions, modify the diagram visually by dragging statuses or transitions around the screen, edit transition properties and behaviors and add global transitions. A global transition is when one status can transition to any other status. I'll show you an example later in the course. For now, just know that global transitions can only be created in diagram mode. Text mode is the more advanced editor. You can edit statuses and transitions plus work directly with the steps. Now, I prefer text mode. For me, transitions are easier to understand in table format. Switch between diagram and text mode using the buttons at the top of the page. There's one more mode in cloud to be aware of. Atlassian has also launched a new editor that's a simplified version of diagram mode. Team managed Jira projects in cloud see this new editor. Try it out and use the one you prefer. Finally, let's look at a workflow the way an end user sees it. Let's create an example story in our new Jira software project. Click the create button at the top of any Jira page. In the overlay, select the acquisition Jira project and select the story type. In cloud, the user can sometimes select the status from the issue creation screen. I'll leave the status as is for now. Then complete any required fields to finish creating the issue. Copy the sample data in the downloadable Jira project configuration handout so you don't have to retype anything. Once the issue is created, click the current status at the top right to see any available transitions. Then click the view workflow diagram link to see the workflow from your user's point of view. You get bonus points if you thought to log into Jira as an end user using your test account.

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