Navigating Jira | ACA-900
Learning to navigate a system is crucial to using it successfully
Navigating a system isn’t something I commonly think about, especially when it’s one I’ve been using extensively for over a decade. That said, learning how to move around a system is incredibly important, and Jira is no exception.
New UI Incoming
One of the advantages of cloud-based software is updates can easily be made to the system and rolled out to everyone… and one of the disadvantages of cloud-based software is updates can easily be made to the system and rolled out to everyone. As of writing Atlassian will be deploying a new user interface (UI) to Jira and Confluence in the next few weeks. At its core it shifts most of the navigation bar from the top of the screen to the side. Personally I’ll find this frustrating in the short term as
Check out this video for more on the UI, but I highly encourage you to try it out before it becomes the standard. This is also something you should tell your team about as others you work with will likely be (more than) confused when everything suddenly shifts to the left.
Navigation Bar
The navigation bar is found at the top (old UI) and side (new UI) of your screen and contains a number of useful menus.
Site/Product selector - This menu lets you switch between products (e.g. Jira to Confluence) or sites (If you have access to multiple sites). I use this frequenrly to move between my work instance and a test instance.
Home page - Clicking the Jira logo brings you back to your home page, a very useful trick! Personally I don’t use this much, but it can help newer users get re-oriented if they get lost or don’t know how to get back somewhere.
Projects - This menu lists the last few projects you’ve visited and keeps your Starred projects at the top.
Filters - Lists the last few filters you’ve used, along with any you’ve starred.
Teams - Lists any teams you’re on and lets you add new ones. I don’t use teams too much, but they let you do things like @ mention a group (but not assign to a group!).
Apps - Lists any apps your instance has, and links to the marketplace. This is something I check any time I end up in a new instance as their add-ons can differ from what I’ve used it.
Finding Boards
Boards are a central part of using Jira Software for many teams. They live under the project in the new UI (which is a bit different from what we’re all used to!). Navigating within a board is fairly straightforward - work items are organized into columns, which include 1 or more statuses. Work items can be dragged into new statuses that update the underlying work item.
Starring Items
A useful feature for navigating is to star frequently used projects, filters and more. This is similar to bookmarking a page, and makjes it easy to find frequently used information. I encourage my team to star the things they use on a regular bsis to make them easy to find. Starred items appear at the top of menus, and can easily be un-starred by clicking on the star again.
Keyboard Shortcuts
There are a number of keyboard shortcuts available in Jira, and while they’re not required learning, they make it a lot easier to use Jira. Personally I’ve memorized a few (and need to learn more!), but know I can always find them by hitting the Shift key and the ? key at the same time. This will bring up the list of all shortcuts, and give me the option of disabling shortcuts all together (although I don’t know of anyone who’s done this).
An important thing to know about shortcuts is that some are dependent on the screen you’re on. For example, when you’re on a board specific shortcuts work, but not when creating a ticket. This makes this a bit more complex to learn, but taking time to figure them out can be a huge timesaver (plus makes you look extra knowledgable :D).
Conclusion
While navigating a system seems like a simple thing it is an incredibly important skill. I find this to be especially true if you’ve never been taught how to do it (like me!). While you will figure things out, you’ll likely miss a lot (for example I didn’t know how to find the keyboard shortcuts for years…).
Check out the full recording below and I look forward to seeing you in a session soon!
Pages and Basic Editing - ACA-920 Confluence Essentials
Pages are the cornerstone of Confluence - so understanding them is critical!
Pages are the basic building block of Confluence and what many of us think of when we think of Confluence. They’re basically Word or Google docs and allow us to create a wide range of information that we can easily share with users.
Page Creation
An important thing to remember is that pages are created under whichever page you have open. This means if you make a page while you’re viewing the home page, it will get dropped at the bottom of the Hierarchy under the home page. If you make a page under one called “design” it will automatically become a child of Design.
This confused me for years…
And is why I don’t like that “+Create” button that’s at the top of everything! I find it much too easy to forget where I’m at and make a page under some random bit of content. That said, it does create the page. My preferred method is to use the “+” buttons in the Hierarchy as I know exactly where the new page is going (under the page I clicked the “+” next to.
Pages can be created in a few ways, but most commonly folks use the “Create+” button that’s clearly visible at the top of Confluence (and basically impossible to lose!). Personally this isn’t my favourite way of creating pages - mostly because when I started using Confluence I started using the “+” button in the Content Hierarchy… but also because it can be easy to “lose” a page when you create it this way.
Child Pages
A great feature of pages is they can be nested under other pages. This allows you to quickly organize content visually, making it much easier for folks to browse through what you’ve created. For example, you can nest all the “Policies” under the “Policy” page. This makes it easier for content creation (since folks know where to put something) and content consumers (since they can find stuff). There’s no known upper limit to the number of layers, but best practice is to limit this to no more than 4 levels to keep things manageable.
Editing Options
After you create a page you’ll see the editing menu, which includes a number of features to help you make content. One important thing to note is that you cannot change the font or text size! Instead, you can change the Text Style - mainly to various headers. I initially found it annoying that you can’t change fonts or sizes, however, it does simplify things (no more “serif” or “sans-serif” arguments!). Headers also serve an important function - they act as links on the page. This lets you easily hyperlink a specific header to someone, or, even better, connect it to various macros (we’ll dig into them more in a future session).
There are some other text options, like bold, italics, strikethrough and color that you can access, along with building lists and indents. The final section (“The good stuff”) contains options for things like adding hyperlinks (you can just CMD+V over text if you’ve copied a link to hyperlink it), insert images and attachments, and include things like layouts and emojis.
Templates
Templates are pre-formatted pages that make it much easier to quickly create (and consume!) content. Confluence comes preloaded with 140+, but Space Admins can also add and edit these to fit your specific needs. I highly recommend you review what templates you have, and then work with your Space Admin to modify as needed.
You can also search through templates, or easily browse with the categories - something I never knew!
Atlassian Intelligence
Atlassian Intelligence (or AI… see what they did there?) is included in Cloud Premium and higher and offers a number of different options to use AI to help improve writing and summarize pages. Personally I mainly use it to summarize things since I’m (sometimes) too lazy to read, but it does offer some great built-in options to leverage AI to speed things ups.
Wrap Up
Our next session is March 28th at 6 AM PDT and covers Advanced Editing- I look forward to seeing you there, and check out the recording from this session below!