Successful product teams incorporate user feedback throughout their development cycle. Product owners meet with customers. Development teams respond to bug reports internally and issues from the field. For user feedback to be helpful to the program, it needs to be actionable. For the developers in the audience, how many of you have seen bug reports like this?
As developers, that type of bug report doesn’t give us much to go on. Ill formed issues are a central developer pain point. We walk through a couple of scenarios and find that the feature is working as designed. We report back to the reporter that the bug is not reproducible. Then begins a long back-and-forth session with the reporter for more detailed information. How can we better empower people reporting issues to give us the information we need the first time?
This outreach is one of the most beneficial things development teams can bring to the user feedback cycle.
Explain how to get the right data
Many teams use the power of custom fields inside of JIRA. Custom fields allow development teams to track data points that are specific to their program which are critical to understanding and resolving issues. The problem is, the further removed the reporter gets from the development team the less they understand about the product, development environments, and which data points are needed to fix a particular bug.
In JIRA, administrators can add some explanatory text to each custom field by creating a page in Confluence that explains how to file a bug for your product. Explain what each field is and how to collect to that data inside of the product. For example, build number is a relevant data point for many teams. Inside of the how-to article, explain where to get the build number. Then, link to that section of the document from JIRA’s custom field description. If the user doesn’t understand how to get the build number, they can simply click on the link and get step-by-step instructions.
Easily file issues with JIRA Capture
A picture is worth 1000 words. JIRA Capture is a browser extension that automates the process of reporting feedback. Users simply load the browser extension and take a screenshot of the web application. JIRA Capture automatically captures environment information and has tools for users to highlight the affected area of the application. Developers can get high quality feedback from designers, product owners, managers, customer support, and anyone else within the ecosystem.
Because JIRA Capture runs inside of the browser, developers can inject JavaScript into the web application to collect even more environmental information such as jQuery version in addition to other statistics.
Product teams can create custom templates that guide users to create actionable feedback. Developers that have a screenshot, environmental information, and steps to reproduce the issue are much more likely to resolve it the first time.
Integrate with JIRA’s REST API
Development teams can go even further by integrating with JIRA’s REST API. Sometimes users are not able to get detailed, critical information out of the application. Empower your application to communicate with JIRA by creating new issues or enhancing data to existing issues.
Creating Issues
Some teams have integrated the JIRA Issue Collector inside of their application. The issue collector is a small snippet of HTML and JavaScript that facilitates logging feedback into a predetermined JIRA project. The reporter doesn’t have to be a JIRA user.
Teams that want a tighter integration with JIRA can simply use the REST API to file issues directly. Users can login to JIRA from within your application and the application can file a bug on behalf of the user. The application collects a summary and description from the user and programmatically includes detailed environmental information like build number, log files, and potentially the stack trace.
Collecting data in a structured fashion makes it easier for the development team to triage these issues. The data is structured in a consistent way in each and every issue. As the team learns which data is important over time they can tweak the integration between their application and JIRA. To learn more about creating issues with the REST API, browse our developer documentation at developer.atlassian.com.
Adding to existing issues
The REST API can be used to add additional information to existing issues. The user can file an issue inside of JIRA and point the application at a particular JIRA ticket. The application can then report the same type of data as above but does not require a user login to do so. To learn more about editing existing issues with the REST API, browser developer documentationdeveloper.atlassian.com.
Minimize developer pain: Connect users with developers
You’re probably thinking, “why make the investment?” Minimizing the time spent on technical debt frees the team to focus on new innovation. If you’re not convinced, I’d suggest running the following JQL statement to see how many issues the team cycles needlessly.
1 | status was “resolved” |
I’m checking to see how many issues got resolved as cannot reproduce by the development team. If there’s a significant number, it’s indicative that the development team is not getting the information it needs from the user base.
So, what creative ways have you integrated JIRA inside of your applications?
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