Business Users

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Improving Jira Cloud User Experience for Businesses

Jira Cloud inherits some limitations from Jira Work Management in terms of how issues are displayed and customized. While Jira Cloud works well for technical teams, it can be tricky for business users to get the most out of it.

Issue Matrix for Jira Cloud solves this by making Jira Cloud more intuitive for non-technical teams. It gives them better visibility to easily understand the information presented in Jira issues. The app improves Jira’s default presentation of sub-tasks, linked issues, and issues in epics and even allows grouping issues with similar summaries or descriptions.

Viewing sub-tasks in Jira Cloud default issue view

Let’s look into how Jira visualizes sub-tasks in issues:

• The panel labeled Child issues has a generic title that might not match the project's specific process. 

• Each issue type is represented by a small, unrecognizable icon.

• Column data lacks clear headings to explain its content.

• It's not possible to include custom fields in this view.

• It’s not possible to delete sub-tasks in this view.

Refer to the image below to see the default Jira issue view.

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Next, we'll show how Issue Matrix lets your business make the most of Jira Cloud for its non-technical teams.

Making issues clearer for business users with Issue Matrix

Issue Matrix is a helpful tool to improve how sub-tasks, linked issues, and issues in epics appear on the issue view screen. It makes Jira's default visualization more user-friendly and helps users save time on checking issue statuses or updates.

Let’s look at an example of a business project’s Issue Matrix panel.

The matrix panel in the image below shows tasks from two different projects with additional information like key, summary, assignee, story point estimate, status, priority. The app additionally allows you to specify sub-task types, customize column headers, use extra filters with extended JQL, and sort your issues in the matrix panel.

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Issue Matrix types

Issue Matrix offers different matrix types you can create and configure to match your teams' needs. With matrix types, you pick which issue types show up on the issue view screen. You can even have multiple matrices showing different issue types in the same issue view. For example, one matrix can show issue links, another can show sub-tasks.

Issue Matrix types:

• Sub-task matrices show sub-tasks of the current issue.

• Issue Links matrices show issues linked to the current issue.

• Epic matrices show issues linked to the current Epic issue.

• JQL matrices show issues from a custom JQL query.

• Similar matrices show issues with a similar Summary/Description text.

Learn how to create and configure different Issue Matrix types.

Contextual linking for better visibility into related issues

Often, Jira issues have shared context even if they're not directly linked. This can be tricky for non-technical teams trying to navigate non-linked problems, based on system or custom field values.

Issue Matrix’s contextual linking feature can help you locate all the relevant information you need. Users can now effectively link related issues using our extended JQL syntax to compare issue fields with the values in the current issue.

The image below shows an example of an Issue Matrix panel that displays only issues with the same assignee as the currently viewed issue.

Content options for better information display

Issue Matrix provides a set of options for the content displayed in the Issue Matrix panel. When configuring an Issue Matrix in a project, you can choose specific settings to control how the panel appears in an issue:

• Context - Define the projects and the issue types where the Issue Matrix panel will be shown.

• Types - Specify which issues to include in the Issue Matrix panel for each issue type.

• Filter JQL - Add a JQL query to further filter the issues shown in your sub-task, issue links, and epic matrices.

• Columns - Choose the columns to appear in the Issue Matrix table, optionally set headers and width for each column.

• Results - Choose the maximum number of issues that the Issue Matrix panel can show.

• Categories - Configure issue categories to organize certain issues into color coded categories.

• Sort By - Define sorting criteria for the Issue Matrix table.

• Preview - Use the preview to see how the Issue Matrix panel will appear and to troubleshoot problems.

• Inline Editing - Enable editing directly in the Issue Matrix table for any field.

See an example matrix configuration in the video below.

Boosting efficiency with inline editing

Inline editing lets users immediately update multiple issues right in an Issue Matrix panel without leaving the current page. For example, you can change estimates for all sub-tasks in an Issue Matrix panel without opening each issue individually.

You can directly update Jira fields such as Summary, Status, Assignee, and more within the Issue Matrix panel. To see the full list of fields you can edit, visit our documentation on the inline editing capabilities provided by Issue Matrix for Jira Cloud.