How to use PixieBrix with Jira?

This post discusses how you can integrate PixieBrix with Jira to streamline the process of ticket creation and encourage more employees to report issues.

Managing every stage of the software development life cycle (SDLC) can be a daunting task. While software management programs like Jira are extremely helpful, they’re not without limitations especially when it comes to using them both efficiently and effectively.

For example, properly creating a task or capturing a bug in Jira is a tedious task. It requires users to stop what they’re doing, switch context, and enter a number of details (e.g., components, reporter, assignee, etc.) related to the bug/flag. As a result, issues are often missing critical details or go unreported altogether.

PixieBrix addresses this and other pitfalls, which makes using Jira smoother and more efficient than ever before!

Creating issues in Jira

Creating issues/tickets is a common task for Jira users. These enable teams to add comments and assign changes to their project in a collaborative, organized way. The problem here is, creating Jira tickets is a task in itself. Things like format and level of detail often vary widely among employees. This and other trivial problems compound together, which makes Jira’s user experience (UX) slower and less efficient than it should be. PixieBrix solves this, creating the ultimate Jira experience every development team needs. How? Keep reading to find out.

How can Pixiebrix help you?

Pixiebrix solves three Jira shortfalls to optimize the UX for today’s challenges:

Jira problem #1: Slow Ticket Creation

Bugs and issues often go unreported because creating Jira tickets is time consuming and requires context switching. This causes product and IT teams to move slower than they should.

The PixieBrix solution

PixieBrix makes the process of creating tickets fast and easy. Users can create new tickets by simply highlighting text on any web page related to the issue/bug, annotating it with context, and sending it off to Jira. You can do this all without ever leaving the current page — no context switching. For example, a customer or colleague may raise an IT issue by sending an email. In that case, you could simply highlight the text right in Gmail, Zendesk, or wherever you receive emails, provide additional context, and send it off to Jira. This increases efficiency and encourages employees to report issues.

Jira problem #2: Inconsistent Ticket Formats

Jira provides a lot of flexibility when it comes to creating tickets. This creates challenges because tickets rarely follow a consistent format, which makes tickets harder to understand and therefore more difficult and time consuming to process.

The PixieBrix solution:

PixieBrix encourages every employee to follow a consistent format when creating Jira tickets. This is because PixieBrix provides a configurable popup form that serves as the user interface (UI) for Jira ticket creation. Managers can customize this form to include only the relevant fields and details required for ticket creation. This makes Jira tickets created via PixieBrix more consistent and clearer for faster ticket processing.

Jira problem #3: Jira Access

Jira tickets are not accessible to everyone. They require the reportee to have a Jira connection and complete knowledge of accessing, reading, and executing Jira tickets.

The PixieBrix solution:

PixieBrix allows anyone in the organization to create Jira tickets even if they don’t have their own Jira account. PixieBrix enables this by providing a Jira API proxy that can be shared across enterprise teams. Therefore, team members who don’t need a full Jira account can still generate issues and bugs via PixieBrix. By democratizing ticket creation across the whole organization, you will uncover and resolve more issues faster.

Is PixieBrix an alternative for Jira?

Short answer, no. PixieBrix is deployed as a Chrome Web Browser extension. Integrations that you develop in PixieBrix live inside your web browser and can interact with any website you visit, including SaaS, proprietary web apps, and third-party websites. This means that PixieBrix is a highly interactive add-on for project management tools like Jira. Unlike staple SDLC services, integrations and workflows developed in PixieBrix can be customized to fit your team’s immediate needs. PixieBrix helps you streamline the process of software development by allowing you to build custom tools that can be used at your convenience.

In Conclusion

PixieBrix is a highly useful web browser extension that can be seamlessly integrated with Jira to solve various problems. PixieBrix makes it easy to create Jira tickets, saving both time and effort. Unlike other SDLC tools, PixieBrix can be customized to cater to your team’s exact needs.

Wondering how to get started? Visit the PixieBrix Marketplace and install the following blueprint: New Jira Issue from Selected Text. It takes less than a minute.

Also check out this video which walks through installation as well as using PixieBrix to create Jira tickets.