Jira 6 adds mobile interface, revamps web interface

Jira, Atlassian's issue tracker and management software, has received a user interface revamp and got a new mobile interface. Jira began life as a software development tool, but according to Atlassian, a recent survey found two thirds of the user base also used it for tasks other than software development. With this in mind, Atlassian set out to make Jira more modern and quicker to use.

The revamped web front end is, the company says, aimed at making teams more productive and has been developed using a "new intuitive, design-centric approach to user experience". That process has already been employed on Atlassian's Confluence and Stash and now is being applied to the company's other flagship application. The redesign has involved adding split screens to allow for issue editing without page flipping and the creation of a new navigation bar for quick access.

JIRA's new user interface and mobile view

The new mobile interface takes its prompts from many social networking applications with quick access to issues, the ability to make rapid comments and to use @-style mentions of colleagues to prioritise, assign or discuss issues. Atlassian also says it has simplified project creation by shipping 20 best-practice pre-configured workflows for project methodologies including scrum and kanban and other workflows are available in the Atlassian marketplace.

Among the other features of Jira 6 is support for subscriptions and bulk watch to allow users to monitor a whole set of issues as an overview or a small set of issues in detail; a recent blog posting from Atlassian covers the details of that feature. Other changes are noted on a What's New page and the release notes.

A free 30-day trial of Jira 6 is available and pricing for the hosted version starts from $10 per month for 10 users or as a downloadable self-hosted version for $10. Prices rise to $50/month for 11-15 hosted users and up to $1000 a month for 2000 users hosted. Full pricing details are available and qualified open source projects can get access for free.

(djwm)