Each week, Marketplace Monday profiles one great add-on available in the Atlassian Marketplace–where you can try and buy more than a thousand add-ons for Atlassian products.
A Jira issue without a screenshot is like flying an airplane in the dark. You have tools and information and data to get a good sense of where you’re going, but with daylight everything becomes a whole lot clearer. For really illustrating an issue, you need a picture. And if a picture tells a thousand words, then a video can tell an entire story.
And that’s where ScreenMail for Jira by Dream Broker comes in. ScreenMail for Jira is a Jira extension of Dream Broker’s original ScreenMail product. ScreenMail for Jira allows you to capture video from your screen and add audio from your computer’s microphone and attach it to a Jira issue at lightning speed. Before we cover what ScreenMail for Jira does for you, allow me to mention what you don’t need to do:
- You don’t need to download any additional software. It’s screen recording, right in your browser.
- You don’t need to pay for any storage space for videos. Secure hosting in the cloud is included.
The Highlight Reel
Let’s face it. Modern software is complex. When issues arise or new features need to be described, it’s often not a simple fix to a single screen, but rather a flow across multiple screens or changes in dynamic content on a screen. When you’re describing a new feature or filing a bug, it’s easier to express what’s going on in a video than several different screenshots.
Type Less
Browser-based screen recording inside of Jira means shorter issue descriptions and less commenting. You can make your point, describe the bug, or illustrate the feature much more quickly. You don’t need to write sentence after sentence describing what happens when you can simply show your screen to anyone who views the issue.
Hypothetically, you don’t even need to write an issue description at all–just take advantage of ScreenMail’s built-in support for recording audio on your computer’s microphone. You can explain away complex ideas that would normally require long descriptions or initiate a string of comments and responses by using a combination of video and audio.
Do It All Faster
Have you ever tried including videos on Jira issues before? You might have recorded a video using desktop screen recording software, then saved the file on your network and pasted the filepath, or uploaded it to YouTube and linked to it from the issue description. ScreenMail eliminates all the hassle and uses issue links to display (and play) the Jira issue right on the ticket. You aren’t taken to another website–everything happens in context. Watch the video below to see it in action.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sl3C3fc-408?rel=0]
Who’s it for?
ScreenMail for Jira is perfect for:
- People who don’t like meetings. ScreenMail eliminates the needs for meetings and web conferences to explain issues between colleagues, teams, or companies. No need to say, “Just come to my desk and I’ll show you”. You can “show” someone right on the Jira issue.
- Specifying tasks. Ari Heljakka, co-founder of Dream Broker, explained in this guest blog post from October 2 why videos are so powerful for describing software development tasks:
While data structures, APIs and architectures can be precisely communicated with text and images, the challenge is far greater for describing functionalities, relationships, and the interplay between the code, user interface, processes and outcomes.
- Distributed teams, who can can communicate asynchronously with videos instead of having a meeting or phone call. This lets everyone work in their own time zone and makes communication faster. You don’t need to wait for the meeting–you can just make a video and then watch/read the reply.
The X Factor
With ScreenMail, videos are reusable. Videos are compiled into project specific lists, which makes it easy to attach a video that was originally created for one issue on to another issue. You can view all the videos created for a project on one screen.
Since last time…
Check these posts each week to see if there’s something new that will work for your organization, then get an evaluation version from the Marketplace or straight from the Universal Plugin Manager in Jira, Confluence, or our developer tools. And check out the first edition of the Atlassian Marketplace newsletter!
New in the Marketplace
- Extend the power of Jira issue filters and make them more visual with icnavigator by Interconcept GmbH
- Create customized templates for commenting on Jira issues with Comment Templates by Spartez