The S Curve

Embedding Professional-quality Reports in Confluence with Teamwork

As an enterprise wiki, Confluence is not only a collaboration platform for sharing user-generated content across teams and departments, it is also an "Information Portal". This capability is particularly enhanced by zAgile Teamwork which allows Confluence users to embed "pixel-perfect" reports in Confluence pages to create dashboards of information collected from various tools integrated into the zAgile platform.

This ability to design and embed visually rich, professional-grade reports into Confluence pages provides the business users with a much more Collaborative, User-friendly and Reliable environment for accessing critical business information.

Collaborative - because the reports, like any other wiki page, can be easily shared with other team members. They can be commented on, submitted for reviews (using JIRA Workflow) and incorporated in other contexts (ex: Bug and Build Activity Reports in a Project Release Dashboard). They can also be shared with others in conventional formats via exports (PDF, CSV, etc.).

User-Friendly -- because providing reports and dashboards within the relevant context of other related business information and data in Confluence pages eliminates the need for the users to access BI tools to generate adhoc reports - every time they need this data and manually collate them with other information context.

Reliable -- because the reports and dashboards offer real-time or near-time views of information captured across applications. All team members that need to access these dashboards can view the same information at the same time - and be assured that the information will not be outdated moments after it was produced.

Teamwork is able to achieve this through the integration of tools from JasperSoft -- the leading provider of Open Source Business Intelligence Software.

• zAgile provides custom datasource for the JasperSoft iReport report designer -- to enable support for SPARQL (query language for RDF/XML). 
•  JasperReport libraries are bundled with zAgile's zCALM Server to publish reports to various clients (including Confluence and zAgile Teamwork Portal) 
•  zAgile's Plugin for Confluence provides macros to render JasperReports into wiki pages with realtime data 

 

 So the net result is:

The following macro notations in a Confluence page:

h4. Request Amounts by Functional Areas

{zreport:designFile=FRbyArea.jrxml|Title=Request Amounts by Functional Areas|exportFormat=html|embedded=true}

h4. Request Amounts by Functional Areas & Status

{zreport:designFile=FRbyFA Bar.jrxml|Title=Request Amounts by Functional Areas & Status|exportFormat=html|embedded=true}

Will give you this output on the page:

 

 

Executing JIRA Workflow Tasks from within Confluence using Teamwork 3

Teamwork 3 provides much tighter integration of Confluence with JIRA Workflows using the JIRA XMLRPC API using the zAgile Teamwork plugin for JIRA.   So it is now possible to initiate and interact with JIRA Workflow-based tasks from within Confluence pages and tables.  

However, beyond this user-friendly interaction, the tasks and their states are also automatically linked with the specific entity (Requirement, Test Case, Document, Business Request, Invoice, etc.) in Confluence from where they are initiated (see example below).  

The two-way linking can now provide the users with a friendly interaction with JIRA while achieving full traceability and reporting.  Users  don't need to access JIRA unless they need to edit/update task details.  Since the integration is done using zAgile's zCALM Server, the information may be accessed anywhere in Confluence or JIRA.   For example, you can query the Review Status of a Specific Document or Requirement, or the Test Execution Status of a Test Case using simple queries in the context of the Document, Requirement or Test Case, without having to go to its corresponding JIRA Task.

 

And of course, all of this is highly configurable, since it is accomplished using templates and macros provided with Teamwork.  Visit the Teamwork sandbox to check out this and other features of Teamwork 3.  

Here is how it works:

The screenshot below shows a couple of sample Requirements for Feature (Smart Search) in Confluence.  Each Requirement may have associated Component(s), Stakeholder(s) as well as Review and Development Tasks.  Review Task here is tied to an Approval Workflow in JIRA.  The same can be done for Implementation Tasks.

Product Managers or Business Analysts defining these Requirements above can "Initiate" Review Sessions, and register the resulting outcome (Approved/Deferred, etc.) with the Requirement.  Clicking on the "Initiate Review" Button against the Requirement 2 above will result in the automatic creation of a JIRA Task for Requirement Approval and return the Task link along with its possible next states as shown below.

 

From here, it is possible to take next actions against the Task, without interacting directly with JIRA.  

 

 

zAgile Teamwork 3 - Advancing integration and interoperability of JIRA and Confluence

 

Earlier this week, zAgile released Teamwork 3 -- a much anticipated and exciting release with significant focus towards improving the integration and interoperability of JIRA and Confluence for team collaboration and software project management.  

With zAgile Teamwork, teams can capture Features, Use Cases, Requirements, Test Suites, Test Cases and other project artifacts in Confluence and use JIRA for managing the execution and workflow of related tasks through Projects and Versions -- with Teamwork automatically integrating the definitions with executions.  

For example, Requirements may be captured in Confluence.  And within Confluence, engineering managers can initiate Approval and Implementation Workflow Tasks, respectively, in JIRA.  

Similarly, Test Cases may be captured and related to Requirements in Confluence but executed across Versions using JIRA -- with full tracking and traceability.

We believe that by separating definition from execution, organizations are able to get the best of both worlds -- using Confluence for capturing and sharing project artifacts, and JIRA for managing task execution, workflows and notifications.  

The key features of Teamwork 3 include:

• Easy creation of templated and parameter-driven Confluence pages
• A redesigned JIRA plugin for easy installation and support for issue submission from Confluence
• The ability to interact with JIRA workflow tasks from within Confluence tables
• Improved Project Dashboards in Confluence
• Pull-down Action Lists in Confluence for embedding Confluence page and JIRA Issue Creation Actions in simple tables
• Integration of JIRA Users and Groups into zCALM repository
• Integration of CRM concepts (Customer Account, Customer Case, etc) with the Software Engineering Lifecycle 

and ... a lot more.

If you are a JIRA and Confluence user, Teamwork 3 is worth checking out :)

zAgile Teamwork 3 is now available for Confluence 3.5 and JIRA 4.3 (support for JIRA 4.4 coming soon).

-Sanjiva