Feature Overview

App configuration

Work Queues

Work queues configure how users can pull work and self-manage their workloads through a consistent work-routing strategy rather than having issues manually assigned to them or cherry-picking issues they prefer to work on.

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Queue configuration screen

The configuration consists of three major sections:

Master routing strategy

The master routing strategy is responsible for determining how a new task is pulled from the list of queues to which a user is subscribed. There are three strategies available:

1. Queue order - picks work in the order of queues listed. The system will pick the first matching task by checking active queues from top to the bottom of the queue stack.

2. Top priority - picks the top priority issue from any of the active queues. The system will check the first issues across queues and pick the one with top priority.

3. Weighted round-robin - distributes workload randomly across queues Set weights to adjust the desired queue affinities when pulling work.

Settings

Allowing to limit the work in progress - the maximum number of unresolved issues that a user can have assigned at a time. If a user hits the limit, the algorithm will not return any new issues until the number of unresolved ones depletes below this value.

Queue stack

Allows to define and configure the queues from which the new issues are pulled by users. The configuration can have an unlimited number of queues.

A new queue is added by clicking the “Add a new queue” button. Once created, it needs to be configured to become operational.

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Queue configuration

The configuration of an individual queue consists of the following parameters:

1. JQL Filter - the JQL FIlter used to define the queue. Pick a publicly available filter to define queue criteria.

2. Users and groupsA publicly shared filter is a prerequisite to create a queue. Please create the desired queue filters with the intended conditions and ordering prior to configuring queues.

Be diligent when it comes to defining the filters for your queues. For successful operations make sure that:

• tasks are filtered accordingly to your use of Jira

• tasks that get assigned to a user are no longer returned by the filter

• filter ordering reflects the order in which you want the issues to be worked on

Depending on the chosen queue distribution strategy, different queue metadata is available.

In the case of Queue order strategy, the stack items get annotated with the order information on the left side of the stack. For Weighted round-robin, an input is presented where you can update the relative weight of a queue when picking tasks.

App operations

Pulling work

The pull work screen is the heart of the competence-based pull work system. It enables users to pull work items based on user skills and Work Queues configuration discussed in the points above.

The screen is available as a Dashboard widget (add “Pull work by competence” when creating a new dashboard or modifying an existing one) and a standalone page under “Apps > Pull and manage work” Jira menu item.

“The Pull another task” button picks and assigns the next eligible task for a user according to their queue subscriptions and the active queue routing strategy.

Managing statuses

The same screen includes unresolved, user-assigned tasks in a summary table in the order of priority. The table also enables the management of statuses for a user’s pending issues directly without going to issue details. The issues changed to resolved statuses will stop appearing in the table after a table refresh.

The component is available through a gadget which you can include in your custom dashboards as well as directly from the top-level Apps menu in Jira Cloud.