Appfire increases the value of platforms such as Atlassian, Microsoft, monday.com, and Salesforce, enabling teams to thrive and do their best work together. The company has been selling its popular products on the Atlassian Marketplace since it first launched in 2012, and today Appfire has the most widely adopted portfolio of Atlassian apps across tens of thousands of customers worldwide.

JXL for Jira

JXL is the all-in-one issue editor and organiser for Jira that performs at any scale to save users countless clicks and hours. Developed by ex-Atlassians Daniel Franz and Hannes Obweger, JXL combines the power of Jira with the simplicity and familiarity of spreadsheets, and the features to get things done. It enables users to inline-edit issues in highly customizable table views, copy and paste fields individually and in bulk, and group and structure issues in customized hierarchies (including for Jira Standard edition subscribers). Users can sum up field values across levels (e.g. epic sum-ups), apply conditional formatting rules, use smart columns, issue history data columns (e.g. time in status measurements), and much more.

JXL and Appfire, better together

The JXL team’s passion for crafting beautiful software that really helps people get their jobs done aligns with Appfire’s mission to equip and connect every team so they can plan and deliver their best work. “We are so excited to bring Daniel and Hannes — both innovative, accomplished founders with deep roots in the Atlassian ecosystem — to our team,” says Appfire Co-Founder and CEO Randall Ward. “Together they’ve built a highly successful, essential app that enhances the power of Jira for a wide range of users. We’re thrilled to offer an easier, faster Jira to Appfire’s customers and partners and to achieve even more with Daniel and Hannes on board.”

JXL customers continue to be in great hands and can expect the same top level of app support with Appfire. There will be no changes to the license renewal process at this time. Customers can trial, purchase, and renew with their Atlassian reseller or directly on the Atlassian Marketplace. The main features of JXL will stay the same, and with the support of Appfire’s infrastructure, customers can look forward to continued investment in the product roadmap with exciting new features, regular updates, and improvements.

Thank you to all our customers who are enjoying and working with us on JXL. We’re grateful for your business and contributions over the past three years and the years to come.

Easier faster Jira!

Your JXL team

JXL joins Appfire was originally published in JXL Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In one of the recent releases of the app, the concept of history columns was introduced. In addition to smart columns, these incredibly versatile and customisable helpers can surface all sorts of hidden Jira data and transform it into actionable information and essential knowledge. If you use Jira for agile work and project management, dev ops, IT service management, manufacturing, product management, business processes, or anything else under the sun, your teams should be empowered to continuously learn from their past performance by answering questions such as:

• How long does it take for work to get picked up? Triaged? Reviewed? Completed? Shipped?
• How much time do specific assignees spend on their tasks and jobs?
• Which teams or team members could use some support?
• What are the bottlenecks they’re struggling with and how can they get resolved?

In this post, we’re giving a quick intro to using issue history data columns in your sheets. To get started, a quick recap of how JXL works: You create sheets, i.e. issue tables with a scope that can be freely defined with a filter or JQL statement. Table columns and layout can be effortlessly arranged to suit whatever is important in your use case. Applications are practically endless.

By adding powerful history columns such as Time in status, Time between statuses, or Time with assignee to your sheets, you can extract historical issue-related data and compile metrics like Lead time or Cycle time in a breeze. It has never been easier and more convenient to put together reports about how long issues have spent in specific status/es or with particular assignee/s on average, in total, etc.

1. Create a sheet with the set of issues you need.
2. Add the column you need to the table.
3. Configure the column to define the measurement you need and give it a fitting title.

History columns offer various configuration options to ensure you get to measure exactly what you need. As an example, in a Time in status column you specify one or multiple statuses that you’d like to be triggers for the measurement. Then you specify which occurrence/s of triggers you’d like the measurement to entail, in case there are multiple occurrences, i.e. in case an issue spends more than one time in the defined status or statuses:

• Latest — Capture the last occurrence
• Earliest — Capture the first occurrence
• Shortest — Capture the shortest occurrence
• Longest — Capture the longest occurrence
• Average — Calculate the average length of all occurrences
• Median — Calculate the median length of all occurrences
• All — Capture and sum up all occurrences
• All including gaps — Capture and sum up all occurrences and include gaps between them

In a Time between statuses column, for example, you can additionally specify the exact trigger points when you’d like the measurement to begin:

• Transition to or creation in — When the issue is transitioned into or created in the specified status or statuses
• Transition to — When the issue is transitioned to into the specified status or statuses
• Creation in — When the issue is created in the specified status or statuses
• Transition from — When the issue is transitioned away from the specified status or statuses

And when it should end:

• Transition to — When the issue is transitioned into the specified status or statuses
• Transition from or now in — When the issue is transitioned away from or is currently in the specified status or statuses
• Transition from — When the issue is transitioned away from the specified status or statuses
• Now in — When the issue is currently in the specified status or statuses

All settings work with useful defaults of course, so you only have to think about them if you really need to. History columns are designed to be extremely powerful yet quick and easy to set up. No tedious report setups, no clumsy exports necessary, just add columns to your sheets. So far, the wide range of JXL history columns includes the following:

• Time in status — The amount of time the issue spent in specified status or statuses.
• Time between statuses — The amount of time the issue spent between specified statuses.
• Time with assignee — The amount of time the issue spent with specified assignee or assignees.
• Time in status with assignee — The amount of time the issue spent in specified status or statuses, with specified assignee or assignees.
• Time between statuses with assignee — The amount of time the issue spent between specified statuses, with specified assignee or assignees.
• Date of status — The time and date when the issue was in specified status or statuses.
• Time since status — The amount of time since the issue was in specified status or statuses.
• Date of status change — The time and date when the issue was transitioned to specified status or statuses.
• Time since status changed — The amount of time since the issue was transitioned to specified status or statuses.
• Number of statuses — The number of times the issue was in specified status or statuses.
• Number of status changes — The number of times the issue was transitioned to specified status or statuses.
• and many more

We are adding more history columns on an ongoing basis and welcome any suggestions. Is there any particular time and date related data in the lifecycle of an issue that you’d like to unearth? Let us know

What’s JXL again? A Jira Cloud, Data Center and Server app that combines the power of Jira with the simplicity of spreadsheets. Features include creating and inline editing issues in highly customizable tables, copying and pasting fields individually or in bulk, grouping and structuring issues in custom hierarchies, summing up fields across levels, ranking issues, applying conditional formatting rules, and much more. It’s the all-in-one issue editor and organiser that saves you countless clicks and hours. Easier faster Jira.

If you haven’t already, take it for a free test drive for a month. It’s also free for up to 10 users. Chances are you’ll never want to go back to vanilla Jira. Secure your free trial here on the Atlassian Marketplace.

Jira time in status, lead time, cycle time, assignee time reporting was originally published in JXL Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

JXL for Jira is a bold venture to make the world’s most used project management software more accessible to everyone. It changes how Jira can be used by millions of people every day.

When we set out on our mission less than three years ago, we were certain that our app will be a success. The way any startup founders are certain about it. Kinda certain. Yes, it’s a great idea, yes, we know what we’re doing when it comes to product strategy, experience design, and software architecture, but how will it really pan out? Will they find it? Will they like it? Will they buy it?

They did. Early on, small teams as well as many of the largest Jira customers started jumping on JXL and never looked back since. This has resulted in the explosive growth that eventually earns us awards like this one now. Not really our style to pat ourselves on the back, but we do want to take a beat and celebrate.

We want to express our deep gratitude to our valued customers and partners. Your trust and continued business are instrumental in propelling JXL to new heights. Awards like this are as much yours as ours, and we are thankful for the opportunity to work with you all on JXL.

It is the loyalty and rewarding collaboration of you that fuel our growth. Your challenges inspire us to innovate, and your successes drive us to continually improve. We are privileged to work with you and look forward to many more years of shared success.

Last but not least, thanks to Deloitte, ASX, Atlassian, DLA Piper, Morgans, and Workday for organising the Technology Fast 50 lists in Australia.

What’s JXL again? An app that combines the power of Jira with the simplicity of spreadsheets. Features include creating and inline editing issues in highly customizable tables, copying and pasting fields individually or in bulk, grouping and structuring issues in custom hierarchies, summing up fields across levels, ranking issues, applying conditional formatting rules, and much more. It’s the all-in-one issue editor and organiser that saves you countless clicks and hours. Easier faster Jira.

JXL recognised on Tech Fast 50 Rising Star 2023 list was originally published in JXL Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In addition to their JQL-based sheet scope, JXL sheets offer various styles of column filtering and level filtering. They support querying issues using logical statements, regular expressions, as well as targeting specific levels of issue hierarchy and custom structures. These capabilities, among others, make JXL an essential extension to Jira for everyone who wants to tame their tickets.

In this post, we’ll walk through different ways of slicing and dicing Jira data with the help of JXL.

Table search

You can filter contents of a sheet using the search field above the table. It optionally accepts logical statements, regular expressions, and supports targeting specific hierarchical levels.

Column filtering

To filter contents of a sheet, simply hover with the cursor over the header of the desired column and click the Filter column button that appears. In the menu that opens, type in a text, pick one or multiple field values, or select a number, date, or time range to filter by.

At the top of many columns’ filtering menus, you can switch between different filter styles, such as Option filter, Text filter, Number filter, Date filter, Date and time filter, Time filter. You can switch most fields’ column filter to a Text filter to significantly expand its search capabilities with logical statements, regular expressions, and more.

Logical statements

To enter a logical statement in a text search, make sure the logic icon in the search field is activated. You can then define disjunctions OR, conjunctions AND, negations NOT, empty values EMPTY NOT EMPTY, exact phrases and escaping " ", and group expressions to control operators' precedence ( ). You can use logical statements in text column filtering, the table search field, and text conditions of conditional formatting.

This can be useful if you need to match issues that include some but exclude other values. Example: Give me all issues assigned to Engineering and Support teams, but not to Marketing, etc.

Regular expressions

To enter a regular expression, make sure the regex icon in the search field is activated. You can use regular expressions in text column filtering, the table search field, and text conditions of conditional formatting.

Regular expressions are useful if you need to execute a wildcard or fuzzy search on Jira issues, i.e. include or exclude issues with specified text, numbers, components, labels, versions, or other fields’ values, where you can define a fragment or other pattern of the value. Example: Give me all issues where the version is equal or higher than “v3.1” or where the assignee ends in “[Acme]”, etc.

Target hierarchical levels

To exclude specific levels of an issue hierarchy or custom structure from your column filtering or table search, click the Choose levels icon in a column filtering menu or in the table search field. You can choose between applying the filter or search to all levels or only top, bottom, parent, or child levels.

This can be useful if you need to exclude sub-tasks or higher-level issues. Example: Give me all issues where the parent’s status category is “In progress”, or where child issues have story points, etc.

Level filtering

To generally hide issues without children or parents in an issue hierarchy or custom structure, click the Filter levels icon above the row handles to the left of the table. In the menu that opens, you can choose to hide top or parent level issues without children, or bottom or child level issues without parents. To only show issues that satisfy criteria of the enabled hierarchy or structure, activate the Hide issues outside levels checkbox.

This can be useful if your overall sheet scope and structure need to be broad, however, you’d like to narrow it down in particular views by excluding certain issues. Example: Hide all epics that don’t have any stories associated, or hide all stories that don’t have parent epics in scope, etc.

What’s JXL again? A Jira app that combines the power of Jira with the simplicity of spreadsheets. Features include creating and inline editing issues in highly customizable tables, copying and pasting fields individually or in bulk, grouping and structuring issues in custom hierarchies, summing up fields across levels, ranking issues, applying conditional formatting rules, and much more. It’s the all-in-one issue editor and organiser that saves you countless clicks and hours. Easier faster Jira.

If you haven’t already, take it for a free test drive for a month. Chances are you’ll never want to go back to vanilla Jira. Secure your free trial here on the Atlassian Marketplace.

Advanced Jira issue search and filtering with logical and regular expressions was originally published in JXL Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Three quarters of a year sufficed to catapult JXL to Silver status in 2021. 1.5 years in, JXL surpassed criteria for Gold status in 2022. Due to its continuing explosive growth, in June 2023, little over two years after its launch, the app made Platinum.

Another big Thank you to all our customers who are enjoying and working with us on JXL. We’re grateful for your contributions and business!

What’s JXL again? The all-in-one issue editor and organiser for Jira. An app that combines the awesome power of Jira with the simplicity of spreadsheets and fills lots of native feature gaps. You can manage your issues by creating and inline-editing them in highly customisable table views, you can mark, copy and paste fields, individually or in bulk, all standard and custom fields supported, you can group and structure issues in custom hierarchies, sum up field values across levels, rank issues, apply automated conditional formatting rules to fields and table rows, export issues without limits, and much more. Easier faster Jira.

Onwards and upwards! (What comes after Platinum? Palladium? Beskar?)

JXL became Atlassian Platinum Marketplace Partner in just 2 years was originally published in JXL Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The all-in-one issue editor and organiser JXL for Jira now allows for ranking issues via drag and drop. Feature backlogs, request queues, task lists, etc. — the use cases for Jira’s LexoRank capabilities are practically endless, just like for JXL sheets. Now you can use both together with issue ranking right inside sheets.

The new feature is available in JXL for Jira Cloud as well as JXL for Jira Data Center and Server v3. To use issue ranking in Jira Data Center and Server, Jira Software must be installed in the Jira site. There also needs to be at least one Global rank field in the system. By default, Jira Software comes with a Global rank field, aptly named “Rank”.

To enable issue ranking, simply click the ranking button in the toolbar above the table in your JXL sheets. If you have multiple Global rank fields in your site, you can choose a specific field to use for ranking.

While ranking is enabled, issues in the table are sorted using the values of the chosen Global rank field. Any other potentially enabled column sorting and any ORDER BY clause that might be defined in the sheet scope are ignored. Now you can just rank away by selecting one or more row handles to the left of the table. Once you have made your selection, drag and drop the rows in the desired new position in the table. Too easy.

Also coming soon: Drag and drop between grouping and hierarchy levels! Dragging and dropping table rows to re-group issues (i.e. update relevant fields when grouping issues) and re-level issues (i.e. update relevant fields when using issue hierarchy or custom issue structure) are not yet supported, however, they are planned future capabilities. We’re on it!

What’s JXL again? A Jira app that combines the power of Jira with the simplicity of spreadsheets. Features include creating and inline editing issues in highly customizable tables, copying and pasting fields individually or in bulk, grouping and structuring issues in custom hierarchies, summing up fields across levels, ranking issues, applying conditional formatting rules, and much more. It’s the all-in-one issue editor and organiser that saves you countless clicks and hours. Easier faster Jira.

If you haven’t already, take it for a free test drive for a month. Chances are you’ll never want to go back to vanilla Jira. Secure your free trial here on the Atlassian Marketplace.

Keep your Jira backlog tidy — Introducing issue ranking in sheets was originally published in JXL Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This includes exceptional efforts in developing new business, thought leadership, and products and services that complement Atlassian’s. Fine Software, the company behind JXL, was one of 26 global partner recipients honoured in the annual Atlassian Partner of the Year program for its continuous efforts and exceptional customer work.

“We’re proud of JXL’s achievements in 2022 and are excited to recognise them as an Atlassian Partner of the Year”, said Allyce Mardesich, Atlassian’s Head of Marketplace Partnerships. “The growth, innovation, and passion our partners demonstrate every day is a key component to the Atlassian solutions unleashing the potential in every team. We look forward to working with JXL to continue providing customers with valuable solutions on the Atlassian Marketplace.”

If you haven’t already, take JXL for a free test drive for a month. Chances are you’ll never want to go back to vanilla Jira. Secure your free trial here on the Atlassian Marketplace.

JXL receives award Atlassian Partner of the Year 2022: Marketplace Rising Star was originally published in JXL Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Jira Cloud and JXL for Jira, the all-in-one issue editor and organiser, now come in different themes. Choose from the original light theme, a new higher-contrast light theme, and a beautiful new dark theme. Available in Jira Cloud, JXL for Jira Cloud, as well as JXL for Jira Data Center and Server.

For years now you have been able to choose between light and dark themes in your operating system, browser, and most other applications in your software stack. Now you can do so in Jira Cloud as well.

In Oct 2022, Atlassian had first announced it’s working on one of the most popular feature requests in the history of the product. Since then, they have been working together with us in an early access program. Now the wait is finally over. The new dark theme is available to all Jira Cloud users!

To switch between light and dark themes in Jira Cloud, check out your Personal settings. JXL for Jira Cloud inherits your theme preference from there. In Jira Data Center and Server, Atlassian doesn’t currently offer themes, however, you can still switch between them in the JXL logo menu at the top right of any JXL page.

Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.
– Yoda, Grand Master of the Jedi High Council

It took a few months to implement theming, especially the new dark theme. It’s very intricate, especially considering the 90-shades spectrum of conditional cell formatting colours in the JXL table. As always, we poured a lot of design love and attention to detail into it and it turned out just perfect. Check it out yourself.

What’s JXL again? A Jira app that combines the power of Jira with the simplicity of spreadsheets. Features include creating and inline editing issues in highly customizable tables, copying and pasting fields individually or in bulk, grouping and structuring issues in custom hierarchies, summing up fields across levels, applying conditional formatting rules, and much more. It’s the all-in-one issue editor and organiser that saves you countless clicks and hours.

If you haven’t already, take it for a free test drive for a month. Chances are you’ll never want to go back to vanilla Jira. Secure your free trial here on the Atlassian Marketplace.

Jira and JXL have a dark side — Introducing a beautiful night mode was originally published in JXL Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Atlassian Team 23

If you haven’t booked your passes yet, it’s high time to change that.

Meet us live in Las Vegas at our kiosk at the Atlassian Ventures booth on Wed 19 April 2023 12:30pm-5:00pm.

Click here to check it out and register

App Day 23

And while you’re there, also swing by the App Day 23 Stand-APP night special the evening before. Join us and a selection of other top app makers at the beautiful Venetian Expo Las Vegas for an evening of APP-solute fun and expertise.

Meet and chat with the top digital transformation app makers and innovators while sharing helpful best practices, real-life experiences and practical how-tos in a fun and engaging evening on Tue 18 April 2023 7:00pm-11:00pm.

Meet the two co-founders of JXL, as well as the creators and experts of your other favourite apps, including Adaptavist, Caelor, Easy Agile, revyz, k15T, Gliffy, 55 Degrees, Umano, Communardo, Old Street Solutions, Yasoon and TechTime.

Register for your complimentary ticket now

All profits of the evening will go to Ukraine-based charity, and spaces are limited.

Join us for Atlassian Team 23 and the App Day 23 Stand-APP night special was originally published in JXL Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

To recap, table cells and rows can be configured to change format if issues’ field values or other data meet specified conditions. For example, if they contain a particular word or phrase, or fit within a particular number, time or date range.

This is very helpful if you need to automatically visually emphasise particular issues or groupings of issues to yourself or your team, for example based on their urgency, priority, severity, or whatever other criteria might be relevant in your use case. Or maybe you just like to colour-code your work or call out individual issues. The conditional formatting feature is here to help.

A conditional format in a JXL sheet consists of a condition, a format (who would have thought?), and at least one rule to apply. To get started, you choose a field to test in the condition. Depending on the type of field, there are various types of conditions available:

Text – Matches text strings
Numbers – Matches number ranges
Times – Matches time ranges
Dates – Matches date or datetime ranges

Coming soon:
Regular expressions – Matches regular expression patterns
JXLQL – Matches an advanced search query

You can also decide whether you want to target the whole table row or a specific column, and choose between various types of formats as well:

Colours – Cell or row background colour is changed

Coming soon:
Symbols – Field value is masked with a symbol
Data bars – Cell background is horizontally filled 0–100 %
Sparklines – Cell shows tiny chart for visual representation of data

The colouring capabilities are a big success and used in many sheets to visualise all sorts of different semantics. Now based on feedback we received, we improved it even more to allow users to choose from 90 different colour shades (previously only 7) and format both the cell content and its background (previously only background).

You can find more detailed documentation of the feature here.

As usual, all this is available in JXL for Jira Cloud and JXL for Jira Data Center and Server, and in Cloud for both company-managed and team-managed projects. So if you haven’t already, take the all-in-one issue editor and organiser for a free test drive for a month. Chances are you’ll never want to go back to vanilla Jira. Secure your free trial here on the Atlassian Marketplace.

Conditional formatting lets your Jira issues and fields stand out - Part 2 was originally published in JXL Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.