Jira is an agile project management software that allows you to plan, track, release and report activities. It also helps you in team planning, assigning tasks and distributing work among the team members. There are many jira apps that are available to help you with your agile software development projects. These apps will allow you to stay connected and engage with your team at all times from any device.

1. Xray Test Management

Xray Test Management is a jira apps that helps you streamline the process of testing by organizing and managing tests, automating their execution, and generating test reports. The application uses specific issue types for this purpose and can link to requirements in Jira to ensure traceability. The application also supports a number of features that help companies meet quality standards. These include change tracking, entity assignment, permission handling, and workflows. These capabilities are essential for companies that work in highly regulated environments or need to comply with common quality standards.

Another feature of Xray is the ability to create pre-conditions, which are necessary for certain tests to run properly. For example, if an application requires a logged-in user, Xray can add a pre-condition that tells the tester to enter a valid username and password before running a test. These pre-conditions can be used to avoid errors when performing tests, and they’re useful in a variety of applications. In addition, Xray can generate a traceability report to show requirements, test runs, and defects, which is helpful for troubleshooting bugs or improving the test plan.

Xray is easy to use and provides many tools for creating and executing tests. It can save testing objects as native Jira issues, allowing users to work with them directly from the issue view. This allows teams to work more effectively together because they can see each other’s updates on the same project and issue screen. This makes it easier to communicate and collaborate, and improves the overall quality of work.

In addition, Xray integrates with a number of other software development tools, including HCL OneTest Server and Confluence. These integrations enable you to track the progress of your tests and create detailed test plans. The Xray app also uses the Jira REST API to post the results of your test runs. This enables you to view the results of your tests and export them in CSV format for further analysis.

Xray also has a variety of gadgets and widgets that let you customize a wide range of reports, making it more convenient for your team to access information about the status of tests and test sets. This can be especially helpful when you need to share important information about the testing process with others, such as executives and other stakeholders.

2. Xray Synchronization

Xray Synchronization automates test case creation, scripting and data management for teams using Jira, enabling in-sprint release of fast-changing systems. Cross-functional teams use intuitive visual flowcharts to generate optimized tests, scripts and data, feeding them into Xray for rigorous and traceable testing. Integrated with Test Modeller, Xray Synchronization links Xray tests to Jira requirements through custom field mappings. Whenever requirements or tests change, changes are automatically fed into Test Modeller for re-generation in Xray. This ensures that all system and requirement changes are reflected in the test cases, keeping the Xray test suites and source control system synchronized with the changes.

The synchronization includes automatic updates to Test Step names, descriptions, data, expected results and more in Xray fields. This makes Xray tests fully traceable and ensures that every test run is a verified and accurate representation of the system as it would look in production. In addition to a single license, Xray Synchronization also supports synchronization between multiple Xray test suites within the same project. This is useful for teams with a large number of requirements and Test Sets.

For a full list of Xray Synchronization features and benefits, please refer to the Xray Test Management Product Guide. One of the main benefits of Xray Synchronization is that it helps to reduce the number of Xray scans needed by increasing the scalability of the Xray application. This is done by auto-scaling the number of Xray pods to match the load. This enables a more efficient scan, as the Xray application can utilize more of its resources to complete a task.

This scalability is achieved by leveraging a Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA) based on CPU consumption. If CPU usage exceeds a threshold, extra pods are added to help distribute the load evenly across all Xray pods. This strategy is less efficient than a more proactive approach of detecting CPU increases and scaling up the Xray application ahead of time.

This allows Xray Test Management to be used on a large scale without the need to constantly update and maintain the Xray software. In addition, Xray Test Management also enables a more flexible and agile testing environment by allowing testers to choose their preferred method of performing a test from the Xray UI rather than having to use a dedicated Xray script. This allows teams to make the most of their time with Xray and improves the quality of the Xray results.

3. Structure For Jira

Structure for jira apps is a powerful tool for efficient teamwork and flexible issue organization, helping you keep track of projects, tasks and processes in the way that makes sense to you. It helps you to get a clear picture of the issues in your Jira project so you can make informed decisions about them. When you have a lot of issues in Jira, it can be hard to navigate them all quickly and find what you need when you need it. This can lead to wasting valuable time trying to sort through a mass of information and missing out on critical details.

One way to address this problem is with a multi-level hierarchy that allows you to group issues by status, sprint, assignee, project, reporter or issue type. That way you can easily find the information that is most relevant to your project. Another option is to build a work breakdown structure (WBS) with issues grouped by size and scope. This is a popular choice in many software development teams because it provides a framework for planning scope and timelines.

But this approach also comes with a few limitations. For example, it can be difficult to create a hierarchical WBS that spans multiple projects without relying on third-party tools such as Gantt or Xray to maintain synchronization. This can be especially problematic when your team is managing a large number of initiatives and the scope of those initiatives spans several projects. In this case, it can be hard to determine the overall progress and timelines of all projects.

To solve this problem, BigPicture for Jira supports a variety of generators that you can use to assemble your Jira project data quickly and accurately. These generators assemble all the issues in your structure from different sources and display them as tables, with rows for issues and columns for issue data. Columns include issues’ Jira fields, as well as Progress and Totals columns that show the combined progress of all the issues in your structure based on their time tracking information, statuses, resolution, or estimates if necessary.

4. JSU Automation Suite

The JSU Automation Suite is an all-in-one tool that helps teams to automate and manage their Jira workflows. Its intuitive, no-code design makes it easy to create a limitless number of custom workflows that can help teams increase productivity and improve team communication. The app also offers a number of features that can streamline issues management and ensure issues stay on track throughout the project lifecycle. Its email this issue feature, for example, allows users to send emails to assignees or reporters from within Jira without requiring an external mail client. It can even track emails that are sent when issues are transitioned and automatically notify users based on their role.

This feature can save teams hours of time that would otherwise be spent manually tracking emails. It can also make it easier to collaborate on issues. It also supports integrations with top test automation tools (such as ReadyAPI, TestComplete, and CrossBrowserTesting), which further adds to its flexibility. ScriptRunner provides powerful Jira automation functionality that includes the ability to add issues when projects are created, post comments to new issues, and send notifications when issues are transitioned. Its Groovy-based scripting language can also be used to build custom scripts that replicate business processes in Jira.

As an added bonus, ScriptRunner has a range of conditions and validators that can be incorporated into your business process flows. These can perform actions such as blocking incorrect transitions or identifying issues that have insufficient details. Aside from that, ScriptRunner has a number of other useful features. For example, it can help users to monitor issues by detecting data entry errors and blocking them from being transitioned. Additionally, it can create work breakdown structures based on the data in Jira and can export the content to MS Excel. This is especially helpful for projects that require detailed timelines or a visual representation of resources and deadlines.

The eazyBI Reports and Charts for Jira plugin is a great way to mine the data in Jira and create reports and charts that can be embedded into dashboards for regular monitoring. Its drag-and-drop report builder makes it quick and easy to create visualizations of Jira data in a variety of formats, including tables, scatter plots, bar charts, and line charts.

Final Thought

So, the best jira apps help teams stay on top of their workload and collaborate in a way that’s easy to understand. They also help users visualize their workload, create and manage tasks, and track progress in real-time.