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  Widget inside of the Jira dashboard

Inspiration

I was sick of context-switching between Jira and a dozen weather apps when planning field work or on-call rotations. One minute you’re sizing up a ticket, the next you’re hunting down wind speeds and storm alerts—and every extra tab eats into your day. During the Forge-Quest hackathon, I decided to bring live weather data into Jira itself. No more guessing if that front-end deploy might get slammed by a sudden thunderstorm—just the facts where you need them.

What I Learned

• Atlassian Forge’s quirks: Forge’s sandboxed environment forces you to rethink how you fetch external data. I got hands-on with the @forge/api module and learned to work around CORS and API rate limits by proxying through Forge functions.
  
• Forge UI & manifest.yml magic: Configuring a gadget in manifest.yml taught me the fine line between a minimal config and a feature-packed gadget. I discovered how to expose configuration options so users can pick their own OpenWeather metrics.
  
• Plain-old JavaScript FTW: Sticking to vanilla JS (no TypeScript bullshit) reminded me that you don’t need fancy types to build a solid prototype—just good promise handling, clear module structure, and a strict linting setup.

How I Built It

1. Scaffold the gadget
   
   • Ran forge create with the jira-dashboard-item template.
     
   • Tweaked manifest.yml to define a new gadget that can live in boards, issue panels, or custom pages.
     
2. Wire up the OpenWeather API
   
   • Stored my API key in Forge’s secure environment variables.
     
   • Wrote a Forge function (src/index.js) that fetches current weather and 5-day forecast JSON, then returns a slimmed-down payload.
     
3. Craft the UI
   
   • Used Forge UI components (Text, Fragment, Table) to render temperature, precipitation, wind speed, and risk flags.
     
   • Added a simple config screen so users can toggle UV index, humidity, or daily highs/lows.
     
4. Deploy & test
   
   • Pushed to Forge with forge deploy and tested in Jira Cloud.
     
   • Iterated on styling to fit Jira’s look without bloating the payload.

Challenges Faced

• CORS & rate limits: The OpenWeather API doesn’t like cross-origin calls, so I had to proxy every request through a Forge function—wasted half an hour chasing random 403s.
  
• Widget sizing: By default, Jira gadgets are tiny. Getting the height right (and surviving the Forge tunnel’s quirks) meant diving into Jira’s docs and trial-and-error CSS hacks.
  
• Time pressure: With under an hour on the clock, I cut out non-essentials—no fancy charts or map overlays. I focused on a lean MVP that shows core metrics and flags tickets that need weather-driven replanning.
  
• Sandbox limits: Forge limits outbound requests per minute. I built a basic in-memory cache in the Forge function to avoid hitting the throttle during heavy dashboard loads.

This gadget proved that you can solve a real pain point in under a day with Forge and plain JS. Next steps: add customizable risk-threshold rules, sprinkle in some sparkline charts, and maybe finally let Jira tell you “don’t schedule that install—you’re getting hail.”

Built With

• openweatherapi
• react
• shadcn
• tailwind
• vite