Remote teams have adapted and grown a lot over the last few years. Collaboration is key, despite team members being on other sides of the country. At Bays we have a flexible working environment where people can visit the office or work from home. Wherever our team choses to work, being able to communicate effectively is crucial to success.
In this blog I will walk you through some of the tips for collaboration that we have learnt while using Jira and Slack. Note that admin privileges are required for some steps.
Connect Apps: The first tip is to connect your Jira Cloud and Slack accounts. This small step opens a huge range of collaboration opportunities. Within Slack, add the Jira app and log into your account to link them.
Invite Jira Cloud to Slack channels: Jira can only post notifications to private channels once it has been invited to that channel. Use the command /invite @Jira to link your channels with Jira.
Link a Slack channel to a specific Jira project: If you have a dedicated Slack channel for a Jira project you can connect them with the command /jira connect. You’ll get notifications when issues are created/updated and you can open a Slack discussion straight from a Jira ticket.
Set your notifications: Tired of receiving an email every time someone updates a Jira ticket? Set your preferences to receive Jira notifications within Slack. Use the command /jira notify to turn on personal notifications. You can chose to hear about updates to issues you watch, are the reporter or assignee for, or when someone mentions you. Each notification has a summary and direct link to the issue in question, making it really easy to go directly to the full information. Turn off email notifications in Jira: Personal settings/Email notifications.
Preview Jira issues in Slack: Use the Jira issue key (eg DEV-14) in a Slack message to show a preview of the details. The issue key must be in upper case on an already connected channel.
Action Jira issues in Slack: You can Assign, Comment, Watch and Transition a Jira issue directly from Slack. Click the More actions (…) option to begin an action.
Create Jira issues in Slack: Use the command /jira create [issueType] [Summary] [description] – a really useful tip if someone has a brilliant idea in a Slack channel, you can add it directly to your project backlog.
Add a Slack comment to a Jira issue: Click on the More actions (…) option on a normal Slack message and select Add to issue. Choose your issue and leave a comment of your own. From here, you can also create a new issue.
Lookup a Jira issue from Slack: If you just need to see an overview of an issue and don’t want to leave Slack, use the command /jira [issue key]. This will show a preview of the issue just to you, it won’t post it on the channel.