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Get started with Jira Work Management
Quickstart guide
Step 1: Learn the basics
Before we get started, there are a few Jira Work Management components to understand.
What's a business project?
A project represents a shared space where you document, track, and organize your work. There are two types of projects in Jira Work Management:
- Team-managed projects are for independent teams who want full autonomy to administer and manage their own projects and processes in a self-contained space.
- Company-managed projects are set up and maintained by Jira admins who manage Jira Work Management and standardize ways of working across many teams.
Jira Work Management offers a variety of project templates for business teams, so you can get set up with your ideal way of working as quickly as possible.
What's an issue?
Think of an issue as an item of work. You can choose the issue type that best represents what you’re working on:
Epic: A large piece of work
Task: Small, distinct pieces of work that may have subtasks
Asset: A digital or physical item to be tracked
Story: Features expressed as user goals
Bug: A problem or error
You can also create your own issue type with a unique icon to reflect the work you do.
What’s a board?
The board provides a Kanban-style visualization of your working process and the status of each issue. Issues are represented by cards you can move around the board. This allows you to track, organize, and prioritize issues across columns that represent your workflow.
What’s a card?
A card shows the summary of an individual issue you’re working on. You can customize cards to show high-level details, such as the due date, assignee, and priority, to help you organize your work.
Selecting a card provides you with more information. You can add any fields you need to be able to work on the issue and leave comments for yourself and others to keep everyone in the loop.
What’s a workflow?
A workflow is the path your issue moves through from start to finish. Jira Work Management's templates are built on workflows that are designed to support different use cases, from coordinating GTM strategies to managing a sales pipeline.
You also have the option to customize your workflow by editing the names of the statuses and adding more steps. The columns of your project board align to the steps in the workflow.
Now you know what makes up Jira Work Management, you’re ready to start using the tool!
Quickstart guide
Step 2: Pick a template
Get set up with Jira Work Management in seconds by choosing one of the many Jira templates. These templates are preconfigured with issue types and workflows – and you can easily customize them to meet your team’s specific needs.
Template categories include:
When you find the template you want to use, select Try now in the template card. This will prompt you to create a new Jira Work Management account and name your first project.
Already use Jira? You automatically have free access to Jira Work Management.
Select Projects in the main navigation bar and select Create project in your Jira account. Choose from the Work management templates to get started with Jira Work Management right away.
Quickstart guide
Step 3: Check out the views
You just landed in your first project in Jira Work Management! Let’s take a look at all the ways you can visualize your work. The project view navigation offers several options:
- Board: This is where you landed. Visualize your work and processes with this kanban-style view.
- Calendar: See your upcoming deadlines, launches, and availability more effectively.
- List: Manage and update your work items quickly and easily in this spreadsheet-style view.
- Summary: Get an overview of your project activities and statistics to make reporting a breeze.
- Timeline: Plan your roadmap and understand dependencies with this Gantt-style view.
With Jira Work Management Premium, you can also bring multiple projects together into one overview. Use summary, calendar, and timeline view — now across projects — to get a clear visual of all the cross-functional dependencies your team needs to stay on top of.
Quickstart guide
Step 4: Customize your project
Make yourself at home! You can customize this space to reflect your team’s unique personality.
- Change the background color of your project: Select the paint can icon next to your project name.
- Change the project icon: Select Project settings in the project view navigation, then select the Change icon button under the existing icon in the next screen. You can upload your own photo or choose from the options.
Quickstart guide
Step 5: Create your first issue
There are two ways to create an issue in Jira Work Management:
Select +Create at the bottom of the first column on your board.
- Enter the summary of the issue and press return to create the card.
- To add more details, select the card and fill out the fields.
Select the Create button in the main navigation bar.
- Add all the information you want in the card.
- Select the Create button at the bottom of the screen to create the card.
Pro tip: You don’t need to be on the board to add new issues to your project. Look for +Create in the List and Timeline views, or simply select a date in the Calendar view to create a new issue.
Quickstart guide
Step 6: Invite your team
Now you’re getting the hang of Jira Work Management, it’s time to invite your team.
- Select the Add people icon next to your avatar.
- Enter the email addresses of your colleague and choose their role: Viewer, Member, or Administrator.
- Select the Add button.
Pro tip: Want to pull in a larger team? Connect to your Google, Slack, or Microsoft account to send out more invitations in less time.
Quickstart guide
Step 7: Connect your tools
Is your team using other tools to get work done? Streamline your processes by connecting your favorite apps to your Jira Work Management project. With 500+ integrations and 3,000+ other extensions, Atlassian Marketplace offers the leading apps for every kind of team.
- Select Apps in the main navigation bar, then select Explore more apps.
- Search for the name of an app or browse by category.
- Select the app card to learn more about using and installing the app.
Quickstart guide
Step 8: Collect information from your team
Tired of writing emails to get requirements from other teams you work with? Jira Work Management lets you create different forms to gather what you need for every task, without the back and forth. Your forms are saved, so you can turn requests into a repeatable process.
- Select Forms in the project view navigation, then select the + Create form button.
- Edit the form by dragging in the fields you want, choosing their order, and editing their names.
- Select Preview at the top of the form to see how it will look.
- Select Share at the top of the form to enter the recipient names or email addresses and send.
Pro tip: Your form will be added to your project as an issue after you submit it. This helps you assign and track the data collection process.
Quickstart guide
Step 9: Move work forward
As you start to make progress on your work, keep your team in the loop and your project up to date. This will make issue-tracking and handovers a breeze.
Is an issue ready to move to the next step in the workflow?
- Drag and drop cards to the next column on the board; or
- Change issue statuses using the dropdown button inside the card.
Need to adjust your workflow?
- Double-click on the column titles to edit the names of the workflow steps.
- Drag and drop columns to reorder the steps.
- Select + next to the final column on the board to create a new step.
Pro tip: Keep work moving forward wherever you are! Try the Jira app for iOS or android.
Quickstart guide
Step 10: Automate the process
Automation rules support important and frequent actions in your processes, such as closing all subtasks when a task is complete. Your team can eliminate easy-to-forget manual updates and never miss a beat.
- Select Project settings in the project view navigation, then select Automation.
- Select the Browse the library button to see the most common automation templates.
- Select the Create rule button to build your own automation rule following the prompts.
Pro tip: You can build unique rules for your team’s processes, but we have plenty of inspiration in the Jira automation template library. You can even test your rule in the Automation Playground.
Quickstart guide
FAQs
Jira tools help teams collaborate, align, and deliver work. They are built on the Jira platform, which helps business and software teams stay connected at scale. Jira Work Management vs. Jira Software Jira Software is purpose built for software teams, who rely on agile ways of working. Jira Work Management has been designed for business teams with views and features to fit their unique ways of working. Jira Core vs. Jira Work Management Jira Work Management is the next generation of Jira Core. The tool has been redesigned and reimagined to accelerate the agility of business teams with more intuitive views and templates. |
Yes, Jira Work Management is included for free with every Jira Software (and Jira Service Management) license. If you are a Jira user, you do not need to buy any additional licenses to get started with Jira Work Management right away. Of course, you can still use Jira Work Management if you don’t use Jira Software. |
Absolutely! Here are some ways you can use Jira Work Management with other Atlassian products: Jira Software
Learn more about Jira Software here. Confluence
Learn more about Confluence here. Jira Service Management
Learn more about Jira Service Management here. Trello
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Already using Trello or trying to decide between Jira Work Management and Trello? Build a stronger, healthier team dynamic with two powerful tools that work better together.
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Software projects are designed to support the agile methodologies of software teams, such as backlog, sprints, and scrum. Business projects help teams across marketing, operations, sales, HR, finance, legal, and design. These teams benefit from a focus on project templates, automation, and visualizations through lists, timelines, calendars, and forms. |
Jira Work Management’s business projects are either team-managed or company-managed:
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You can always get started with Jira Work Management for free here. If you have 10 or fewer users, Jira Work Management will always be free. Full access to Jira Work Management is also included for free with every Jira Software or Jira Service Management license. Not a Jira user? Jira Work Management’s Standard and Premium plans accommodate up to 35,000 users and offer features to help you scale. We can even provide you with an enterprise solution for over 35,000 users. Learn more about Jira Work Management pricing here. |
You cannot currently build your own templates. We recommend choosing one of the existing templates that aligns most closely with your process from the Template hub. We’ve made it easy to edit, add, and reorder the steps in the workflows. You can also get started with a blank template and customize it to your exact needs. |
Use a project when your team needs a shared space to document, visualize, track, and organize work. Use an epic to represent a significant piece of work within a larger initiative. You can break down epics into stories and tasks, but you won’t be able to visualize all those issues as they move through your workflow as easily as you can in a project. Learn more about choosing issue types here. |
To change the issue type, select the card for the issue you want to change. Select the issue icon in the top-left corner of the card. This will give you a dropdown of the issue types that currently exist for your project. Don’t see the issue type you want? If you have Admin permissions, select Project settings in the main navigation bar, then select Issues. Here you can add new issue types. If you don’t have permission to do this, you will need to contact your Admin for assistance. |
Child issues are another name for subtasks. You can create child issues within issues to break down your tasks into smaller action items. |
To delete an issue, select the card of the issue you want to delete. In the open card, select the Actions menu in the top-right corner. You should see the option to delete the issue here. Please note that selecting Delete will permanently delete that issue and any child issues or subtasks. Still can’t delete the issue? You may not have permission to delete issues. |
You can filter issues in any of the Jira Work Management views. Select Filter in the top-right of the view and filter by:
You can also create filters based on your most frequent searches in Jira Work Management. After entering your query in the search box in the main navigation bar, you will land on the Search page. Select Save as next to Search to name and save your search as a filter. To use your custom filters, select Filter in the main navigation bar and select your chosen filter. |
There are a few ways Jira Work Management supports high-level project management:
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Advanced Roadmaps access boards, projects, and filters across multiple teams to give you a customizable visualization of work. You can see all the dependencies and due dates that exist. The sandbox environment allows you to plan and experiment with capacity and variations of your critical path based on all the data. |
Jira Work Management offers a range of reports to analyze issues, track time, and understand workloads within your individual projects. It’s a great way to get more granular after checking the Summary view. To generate a report, select Reports in the project view navigation, then choose your report type. The configuration screen allows you to pick your project, filter, and time period. |