Jira on your Dashboard

Shine Technologies is proud to support Mark Johnson in his development of the Jira Widget for the OS X Dashboard. This widget is based heavily on the Jira Widget for the Yahoo! Widget Engine by Shaun Ervine.

Yahoo! Widget Engine Version

If you are after that version please go here

Name Jira Dashboard widget
Version 1.0.4
Author(s) Mark Johnson (Shine Technologies)
Homepage http://www.shinetech.com
License BSD

Description/Features

The Dashboard JIRA Widget enables you to keep track of issues from your very own desktop!
Its main feature is to allow you to watch one or more Jira filters from your dashboard and then link directly into the filter or a specific issue!

Installation

This widget requires version 3.4.3+ of JIRA RPC Plugin . As it is using to my knowledge some JIRA web services that aren't available in earlier versions.
In order for the JIRA widget to work you must be running OS X with Dashboard and enable the XML-RPC plugin version 3.4.3+.

Enable XML-RPC Plugin

There is a great page on the XML-RPC Plugin. It will show you what you need to do to enable it. JIRA XML-RPC Overview

Create a global filter

This step is optional you can use any filter that you want to view issues from!

But if you would like to know how to create a global filter see the following documentation.
http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/docs/latest/permissions.html#global_permissions

Using the JIRA Widget

Simply download the JIRA Widget and load it up.  The first time you run it you will see a message telling you to configure the preferences.  This is so you can connect to your own JIRA installation.

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger is required. If you're using Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, Show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget's icon in the Widget Bar to open it. If you're using a browser other than Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, unarchive it and place it in /Library/Widgets/ in your home folder. Show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget's icon in the Widget Bar to open it.

Configure the JIRA Widget

This is the screen you will see to configure the JIRA widget.  Its pretty straigh forward and is the only configuration you will ever need to do.

  • Enter the URL of your JIRA install eg http://jira.mydomain.com.
  • Enter your username and password.
  • Supply the FilterId of the filter which contains the issues you want to monitor.
  • Click save and thats it you can now keep track of your issues.
    You can also change the background color of the widget to suit your desktop!

Manually refreshing the issue list 

If you want to manually refresh the JIRA Widget issue list you can by clicking the Jira logo on the widget.

Open issue in Default Browser 

All issues displayed in the JIRA Widget are linked to the URL of the issue.  So simply by clicking on the issue text will open up the URL in your default webrowser. Which saves time hunting around for that issue!

Keep track of multiple issues

 The JIRA Widget allows you to keep track of as many filters you want.  Simply drag more instances onto your Dashboard from the list of available widgets.