Replacement of glance panels in Jira's new issue view

Hi everyone,

My name is Loretta and I am a Product Manager in the Jira Cloud Issue Experience team. Today we’re announcing an improvement we will be making to how content from apps are displayed within the new issue view.

What is changing?

For Forge and Connect ecosystem apps that appear in the right column of the new issue view, glances will be removed and replaced with collapsible groups (expandables). Each app will appear in its own separate group and individual users can expand/collapse each group/s (this selection will persist for all issues in the project).

Current design with Glances

glancepanel2

New design with Groups

addongroup

Why is it changing?

We’ve received feedback from our users that the current glance pattern makes it hard to find and update fields in the new issue view. The new grouping pattern has the following benefits for users:

  • Makes it easier to find app fields on the new issue view
  • Removes the need to click to see the content of apps available in the issue view
  • Users who don’t use a particular app can collapse its group
  • Users who frequently use an app field can expand its group and keep it visible for all issues in the project (this persists at the individual user level only)

What do I need to do?

We will be providing a new extension point, the expandable API, to replace our current glance API for Forge and Connect. You will need to replace the jiraIssueGlances and jira:issueGlance module definition in the app descriptor for Connect and Forge apps, no later than 6 months after it is available.

By when do I need to do it?

We are currently spiking this and estimate that the new extension point will be available in April. Be sure to watch the Jira changelog on DAC for the official release of the new API and deprecation notice of the old API.

7 Likes

Are groups per app or based on some other category?
What will determine group order?

Hey @boris - groups will be per app.
Initially, we will have a set order for grouping, but our long term vision is to make this configurable by admins from the layout configuration page so they can re-order as they wish

So in the last couple of years, we went from:

Top navigation → Side navigation → Top navigation, and
Apps in the sidebar → Issue glance → Apps in the sidebar

Apologies, but this feels like we are just going in circles and burning working hours.

While these changes look easy to adopt, I think we cannot forget all the downstream work that is caused by these changes:

  • for vendors a UI concept developed for an issue glance may not work the same way for collapsible groups
  • updating documentation again
  • re-training and re-educating users

just to name a few things.

10 Likes

Hi @tbinna
Thanks for the feedback. Apps will still remain in the side bar, that is not changing. But we are evolving the design pattern for these. I understand that this does cause downstream work, hence our 6 month deprecation period.

If you have concerns about how your app UI will work in a collapsible group, i’d love to jump on a call to understand a bit more and for you to run me through some of your challenges.

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Thanks for the quick follow-up, Loretta. We will first have to test it out when it is ready and see how it works in the updated UI. I do believe we will be able to make it work, but the message I wanted to send was that I feel there is no consistency in Atlassian’s design decisions.

Mid/end of last year we were considering re-working our issue glance design but when we noticed that the sidebar design is changing again we gave it up. As it turns out today, that was the right decision.

5 Likes

Hello @LorettaBrunette,

Thanks a lot for the heads-up!

Will this also affect the assetPanels Jira connect module? It renders just like an issue glance.

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What a great change, thank you.
Even if we are implementing a workaround for the current behaviour using jiraIssueContents, this change should be more helpful for the customers

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@LorettaBrunette - since you’re making changes to this part of the UI, can we get a way to show more than 1 badge when the panel is collapsed?

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thanks for the suggestion @ademoss - the heading in the new grouping pattern is limited to one line so we would need to explore how we cap the number of badges etc. It’s not a request I have heard before but we can consider exploring it in the future if we do get more feedback on this

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Hi @BenRomberg - no, the assetPanels Jira connect module won’t be affected with this release but it is something we will look into shortly

@LorettaBrunette - does this change enable apps to have multiple panels in the sidebar?

Hi @ademoss - no, each app will have one group/expandable, similar to how glances work today

@LorettaBrunette - any particular reason for that limit?

Also, does this change mean an app can no longer trigger a glance (which would be shown as the entire sidebar)? Or will that still be possible?

@LorettaBrunette for what it’s worth, we would also be interested in having multiple groups for a single app. It would make it much easier for customers to handle our glance

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hi @ademoss - for our initial release, we will be matching the behaviour of glances where there is a 1-1 relationship - we made this decision because we don’t want customers with multiple add ons to be overwhelmed with too many groups/expandables (as the customer may already have up to 4 groups appearing with their other issue fields). We also want to avoid users needing to click and collapse groups as they search for the field they are interested in.
In saying that, I would be interested in understanding more about your app and use cases as it’s not something we are against exploring in the future

And correct, apps will no longer be able to trigger a glance, we will be deprecating these in favour of groups/expands

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hey @andreas.schmidt - it would be great to learn more about your app and use cases for multiple groups, even though this is out of scope at the moment, we are open to exploring it in a future release

Hi @LorettaBrunette
Having the ability to add multiple groups for a single app would be great and improve UX for some use cases. I’d be happy to discuss this further when it suits you best!

Hi @JulietteLallement - would be great if you could walk us through some of your use cases. Here is my calendly link if you are available to book some time in with myself (and i’ll invite some of the team)

hey @andreas.schmidt - just realised i forgot to add my calendly link to my reply. Here it is, would be great if you have time to run us through your use cases for multiple groups