Of course, Jira is primarily about organization and administration. And because its main focus is to help enterprises plan and manage projects, it follows that the user experience of the platform’s administrators is central to Jira’s effectiveness. So what challenges do the admins working with Jira face?

In fact, Jira project configurations are not really transparent, especially in the case of more complex projects. For example, if there is a problem with a workflow validator, and the admin has to investigate the root cause, Jira is not ideal for supporting this process. After careful analysis, we have pinpointed four main areas where issues or problems may arise with Jira project administration.

1.  Manual documentation of projects

With Jira, just like with many other platforms, manual documentation, clear updates, and maintaining up-to-date information related to the project can be extremely time-consuming. Not only is manual documentation a slow business in Jira, but the lack of dynamism means that if further changes occur in the system, those updates will not be included in your final report. As a result, the Jira project documentation is often out of date by the time it is published.

2. Audit obligations

In many enterprises, Jira project documentation is required to help complete audits. These might be internal audits to ensure that the work is consistent with company policy or external ones, where the focus is typically on providing evidence of complying with regulatory standards such as ISO, HIPAA and GDPR. Because of the sheer wealth of data and information required and the lack of automation options, Jira administrators find compiling audit documentation especially tricky. In fact, assembling documentation to meet audit obligations can take up to 40 (!) hours per project.

3. Onboarding and training users, tracking progress

Of course, it’s natural for new users to take time to get up to speed with a new software or platform. However, Jira project administrators often observe that onboarding, training, and supporting new team members and even more experienced Jira users is a long and sometimes painstaking process. These problems are a source of frustration for both admins and general users. This issue is further complicated by the fact that a fellow administrator may have created or modified the project in question, and Jira’s relative lack of transparency often makes it harder to provide a definitive response. 

4. Cloud migration

Today, it is fair to say that the cloud is now seen less as an innovation and more as a basic expectation – standard operating procedure. At the same time, Jira administrators will tell you that cloud migrations can potentially turn their whole working life upside down. On top of a range of technical issues, from uploading large files to licensing issues, admins have to deal with the challenge of ensuring that all previous project settings are successfully migrated.

The rescue - Automated project documentation

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So what’s the solution? One of the best things about Jira and the Atlassian ecosystem as a whole is their openness to close integration with other platforms and for third-party developers to create additional applications that improve your overall user experience. It should come as no surprise to learn that there are now several Jira project documentation apps available that, though different, all serve the same basic aim – to make Jira a more user-friendly and efficient platform for both admins and general users.

What’s in it for Jira admins and project admins?

• Automated project documentation frees up your resources: Automation is a great time-saver - we would argue it is utterly essential. A documentation app makes the admin’s life easier by eliminating the time spent on tedious manual documentation. A genuinely effective project documentation tool for Jira is almost guaranteed to free you up to perform more creative or exciting work.

• Provide complete & accurate information for auditors: The ability to call up the necessary documentation quickly enables to provide fast, comprehensive information for internal and external audit requirements. Best apps offer the option to export Jira projects to PDF (and Confluence) so admins can present striking project documents to auditors and users. 

• Easy overview of Jira project configurations: The best apps provide a simple way to gain a clear overview of project settings, which is particularly useful if multiple admins are working on the same project or a new team member needs a quick onboarding.

• Reduce your team's learning curve: Having the opportunity to guide your team through the fundamentals of Jira and help them discover its most powerful services through clear articles, tutorials and other educational content is a powerful weapon.

• Cool documentation enables users to self-serve: These apps help users to self-learn project workflow settings, notifications, project permissions, and allocated roles in the form of easy-to-understand documentation. 

• “Snapshot and compare” make collaboration with other Jira admins easier: The snapshot option can give admins a much clearer overview of the project settings and help quickly identify differences between project config versions. This feature provides transparent information about the changes fellow Jira administrators made in the project, which can be especially useful during a cloud migration.

Summary

Like all Atlassian products, Jira is deliberately designed for interaction and compatibility with a wide variety of other platforms and a range of Jira-specific apps. It is an organically developed, multi-faceted product and part of a highly connected world – effective but complex. As a result, perhaps you notice that your team is struggling with issuing documentation in Jira, or learning both the basics and the more essential features of the platform. In that case, it makes perfect sense to seek out a project documentation app to help improve their Jira experience. The key is to identify the right app that will lead you to ever-greater simplicity and productivity instead of adding greater complexity to your working life.

‍Check out META-INF’s automated project documentation app here.