| A comparative review of various todo list / checklist plugins available for JIRA. |
Sometimes in JIRA you want a checklist, or todo list for your issue, just like Confluence's Task List. What are your options?
- You could model your todo items as sub-tasks. Advantages: todo items can have assignees, due dates, and a fancy workflow. Disadvantage: visual clutter, difficult to use, and you don't need the full power for JIRA for something this simple.
- You might try to use JIRA's built-in 'Checkboxes' field type for a 'Todo' field. This does not work. With JIRA checkboxes, only checked items show. Unchecked items are considered to be "irrelevant to this issue", and so don't display except when editing. A todo list with no completed items wouldn't show up at all. In a todo list, unchecked means "task is not yet completed", which makes it just as (or more) important than checked items.
- Consider the various JIRA checklist / todo list plugins.
Here we review a handful of checklist / todo list plugins available (in February 2016), seeing how they stack up to each other and the built-in Checkboxes field.
| Built-in JIRA Checkboxes | ToDo list custom field | Checklist for JIRA | Simple Tasklists | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price (Feb '16) | n/a | $0 | 10 / 35 / 75 / 150 / 325 / 480 / 650 / 875 / 950 | 10 / 25 / 50 / 100 / 250 / 275 / 325 / 325 | 10 / 20 / 40 / 80 / 125 / 200 / 200 / 400 / 400 |
| Support | n/a | Via answers.atlassian.com | Via JIRA on https://kanoah.atlassian.net | Via answers.atlassian.com | |
| Issue View | JIRA only displays the values of checkboxes that have been ticked.
|  | By default only the first two checkboxes are shown – even if other hidden ones are checked:
Strikethrough can also be turned off.
|  | Unlike others, Simple Tasklists is not a custom field, but rather some specially formatted text (macro) in the issue description:
|
| All Checkboxes Ticked |  |  |  |  |  |
| Edit View |  |  |
Note the stars, indicating 'required' fields. |
Note the ability to edit/delete items on the fly
| Here are the {task}'s in the description, plus the rendered view on the right. There is also a {tasklist} macro, but this auto-expands to a set of {task}s.
|
| Search Results / List View |
|  |  |
| Due to what may be a bug, checkboxes aren't appearing as ticked when they should See https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/37042292/search-results-not-showing-ticks-in-checked-items
|
| Structure View |  |  |
|  |  |
| Searchability |
|  |
|
| Search does not appear to be possible. See https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/37042662/ability-to-search-for-an-issue-by-tasklist-item-status |
| Configuration |  | Options are not managed centrally, but rather per-issue. New issues acquire the Default Value. Due to what seems like a bug, the Default Value doesn't display:
until one clicks 'Edit Default Value':
| \ | Options are not managed centrally, but rather per-issue. New issues acquire the Default Value:
| Template sets of tasks called 'tasklists' can be defined:
Tasklists are just templates, not centrally managed sets of tasks. Each issue's set of tasks derived from the tasklist may vary individually. |
| Customizability | n/a | n/a |
| n/a | A few tweaks are available:
|
| Internal Database Representation |
11202 |
[{"id":"Overview Doc Written","type":"done"},{"id":"High Level User Stories Written","type":"done"},{"id":"UX Design Developed","type":"done"},{"id":"Eng Tech Spec Written","type":"todo"},{"id":"Eng t-shirt Size & Quarter Commit","type":"todo"},{"id":"All Sprints Scheduled","type":"todo"}] |
{"checked":false,"name":"","mandatory":true,"rank":5,"optionId":11215,"version":"3.0","id":11215,"statusId":"none"}{"checked":false,"name":"","mandatory":true,"rank":4,"optionId":11214,"version":"3.0","id":11214,"statusId":"none"}{"checked":false,"name":"","mandatory":true,"rank":3,"optionId":11213,"version":"3.0","id":11213,"statusId":"none"}{"checked":true,"name":"","mandatory":true,"rank":2,"optionId":11212,"version":"3.0","id":11212,"statusId":"none"}{"checked":true,"name":"","mandatory":true,"rank":1,"optionId":11211,"version":"3.0","id":11211,"statusId":"none"}{"checked":true,"name":"","mandatory":false,"rank":0,"optionId":11210,"version":"3.0","id":11210,"statusId":"none"} |
[{"description":"Overview Doc Written","checked":true},{"description":"High Level User Stories Written","checked":true},{"description":"UX Design Developed","checked":true},{"description":"Eng Tech Spec Written","checked":false},{"description":"Eng t-shirt Size & Quarter Commit","checked":false},{"description":"All Sprints Scheduled","checked":false},{"description":"All Code Checked In & Tested","checked":false}] | A custom table,
Likewise for tasklists:
|
| Once an issue is created, its options vary completely independently of any other. You can create new checkboxes on the fly within the issue. You cannot bulk-change the wording of a checkbox across issues. | |||||
Simple Tasklists is the most interesting and promising of the bunch, because it implements its own back-end, rather than being limited by the custom field API, and exposes this back-end via macros in the description and comments. Tasks can be interspersed within a free-form issue description, or added via comments, and are all nicely aggregated by the Task panel. Like in Confluence, tasks can be assigned via @mention reference, and will appear in a user's task tray. There is also the possibility (hampered by bugs at present) of ticking off tasks via the search results or gadgets view. The plugin has some limitations and missed opportunities at present:
|
Conclusion