JIRA is a platform that allows teams to create, capture, and organize issues, develop solutions and follow team activity for multiple projects at a time. The Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) maintains a JIRA environment as an issue reporting/tracking platform that encourages user communities to collaborate on numerous Health IT projects. The system provides links to the projects, as well as other useful information relative to the topics being discussed. JIRA allows different projects to have different workflows to match current teams' processes and the system is especially adept at capturing, prioritizing, and taking action on issues for each project. The ultimate goal for this project is to build a place where users can look for answers to questions, share suggestions, and provide real-time feedback.
ONC Confluence is operated in conjunction with the current instance of ONC JIRA, and shares the same resources and practices for technical support (see SOPs and SLAs below). ONC Confluence relies on ONC JIRA for user management and troubleshooting support. ONC Confluence Users must have an ONC JIRA account. User groups are set up for each Confluence space within ONC JIRA, and are linked to Confluence through back-end processes.
To keep different project phases and milestones organized for different users in different projects, JIRA has a four-level hierarchy: Projects > Issues > Subtasks.
Project – The project is the highest-level container for issues in JIRA. The project level allows users to get a quick view of a project by reviewing issues and any progress made on addressing each issue. Reports are available on open issues, popular issues, user workloads, etc.
Issues – Projects are set up to track different types of issues. Depending on how the project is being used, an issue could represent a question, feedback, a form submission, a bug, etc.
Subtasks – Subtasks help break down complicated issues into manageable pieces because they are treated as separate issues. They can be defined in numerous different ways, assigned to different users, have time estimates set, etc. They can even have their own workflow that differs from parent tasks.
JIRA
In JIRA, groups and roles are a way to manage collections of users. Instead of assigning a particular permission or notification to an individual user, we can use groups or roles. If a group/role is used, each member of the group/role will be given that permission or get that notification.
By default, ONC JIRA assumes three user roles: administrators, developers, and users. To better associate users and user groups with specific projects, JIRA can be further customized by adding new user roles. Groups and Roles can be used by a project's notification scheme, permissions scheme, issue security scheme, comment visibility, and workflows.
User Role |
Abilities |
Administrators |
Typically administer a given project |
Developers |
Typically work on issues in a given projects |
Users |
Typically log issues in a given project |
Confluence
ONC Confluence employs global, space, and page-specific access controls. Global permissions are site-wide permissions, and can only be assigned by the ONC JIRA team. Furthermore, each space has an independent set of permissions, which is managed by the individual space administrators. Space permissions can be used to allow specific users or groups of users to view, add, edit, and delete content within that space. Space permissions are also used to set what is visible/editable by anonymous users. By default, pages are open to viewing and editing by all users that have access to the space. However, space administrators can restrict either viewing or editing to certain users or user groups if necessary.
Level of Severity |
Description of Severity |
Initial Response Within: |
Level 1 |
Production application down, or major malfunction high numbers of staff unable to perform their normal functions. |
4 working hours |
Level 2 |
Serious degradation of application performance or functionality. |
8 working hours |
Level 3 |
Production application issue that has moderate impact |
12 working hours |
In the event of a planned outage for system maintenance, notification emails will be sent out to all JIRA users according to the following schedule:
- First notice – Sent 3 to 4 days prior
- Second notice – Sent 1 to 2 days prior
- Final notice – Sent same day as outage
- Restore communication – Sent immediately following outage
Definition – Provisioning of system users (e.g., user names and passwords, roles and group membership, etc.).
Process for making request – Contact JIRA Administrator per instructions in SOP.
Timeframe for response – Ad-hoc 24 hour initial response for requests received during normal business hours 8am to 5pm ET. Discussed during weekly status updates.
Owner – JIRA Administrator
Definition – A Confluence space is the team-collaboration platform that allows users to create and share pages, blogs, and meeting minutes.
Process for making request – Contact Project Manager per instructions in SOP.
Timeframe for response – Ad-hoc 24 hour initial response time for requests received during normal business hours 8am to 5pm ET. Discussed during weekly status updates. Nature of request may require new design process to estimate schedule and level of effort.
Owner – JIRA Administrator
Definition – High priority issue affecting system functionality, or performance, needing immediate remedy.
Process for making request – Contact JIRA Administrator per instructions in policy and procedure manual.
Timeframe for response – See "Emergency change requests response time table" below. Response times based on requests received during normal business hours 8asm to 5pm ET.
Owner – JIRA Administrator