Can I use JIRA as a generic question queueing system?

[sdanzig]

A company I'm about to join, along with my last few employers, uses JIRA. I like JIRA for feature/bug ticketing, and it integrates well with other tools I like, so it's a good thing! However, there's another use I'm thinking it would fit well in. I haven't dove into the administrative side of JIRA, and I'm going to, but can someone tell me, can I configure JIRA to support the simple asking questions, which may or may not be tied to a particular project or story? Perhaps just a generic question like "Where'd you put the stapler?" I want that question about the stapler queued for Bob until he either answers it, or assigns it to someone else he thinks can answer it. I want to be able to ask Bob where the stapler by just doing something as close as possible to "Create Question" Subject "Where's the stapler?" Description "I could have sworn you borrowed the stapler from me last Thursday." Assignee "Bob" Send. Before I hit send, maybe I had the option of selecting a particular project "Organizing the mess of papers" or a story "Stapling the related pages together". But I don't have to. Those fields default to none.

Maybe "Create Issue" the selecting a type as "Generic Question".. although a Create Question button might be better if the feature is used a lot. So, with JIRA, how easy is this to do? Should this be obvious after I RTFM, or could someone please summarize the general process to implement this sort of thing?

Thanks.

Scott Danzig

Software Engineer

[Harry Chan · Accepted solution]

Hi, whether it's the best tool is a different story, but it's doable. A project is just a grouping of JIRA issues - it can be for a team, group, a project project or anything. You can create an issue type you like, such as Generic Question.

I don't see a problem with this. Not hard.

[sdanzig]

Thanks Harry! But two followup questions then:

1. The form for each issue type is easily configurable, field-wise? Basically, I'm looking to make the form ultra-simple.

2. Do you think there's a better tool for this type of thing?

[Harry Chan]

1. Yes, that's just a "screen". You can configure the fields on it.

2. If you're looking at a tool that's directed a single user and not more of an open-type of discussion / commenting system then yes this would work fine. It's "heavy" if it's the only usage, but if you've got JIRA already, then it works.

[Gregory Demotchkine]

Jira is definitely not meant as a Q&A Module like Stack exchange...

But it's definitely configurable enough - workflow transitions with post functions and conditions, screens and custom fields, dashboards shared between users, voting, comments.

So you got enough bits and parts here to approximate quite closely a Q&A forum.

Check out this addin for jira to add a Q&A panel for your Jira issues

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/ro.agrade.jira.qanda

and this one for adding threaded comments.

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.atlassian.jira.threadedcomments.threaded-comments