Checklist Workflows: Nested & Automated — Nesty

Nesty brings powerful nested checklists and advanced workflow automation directly into Jira. Build deeply structured checklists, create predictable, repeatable workflows and organize complex tasks.

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Inspiration

As a Software Developer, I always found that team communication would become sloppy over time as people natually become complacent so I wanted to fully automate this process of team communication and hand-off to keep us constantly in sync, and in a format that allows for teams to fully breakdown issues into small and descriptive steps.

What it does

Nesty is fully built on forge and sits within issues - it allows users to automate processes after specific criteria has been checked / completed.

Each checklist item can be formatted as text, titles, or triggers. Triggers unlock workflow capabilities by running an action once items in the same nested level are complete:

  • Block checklist progress until required steps are completed
  • Trigger actions once items are completed, automatically
  • Notify specific channels when progress reaches key points
  • Auto-change assignees based on conditions
  • Convert checklist items into subtasks for deeper tracking

Nested structure

  • allow for items to be infinitely** nested so that you can keep breaking down criteria into tiny manageable steps.
  • means that items can have descriptions as well as be separated for clear requirements and allows you to add any relevant information such as thoughts or links to Confluence.

This means that you can setup reusable workflows perfect for automating team communication and co-ordinating handoffs. This is very flexible and so although it was designed from a developers perspective, practically any team can make use of this!

How we built it

This is fully built within Forge using React and Typescript - all housed on Atlassian servers!

Challenges we ran into

Drag and Drop

This was a huge challenge to get this working within Jira's UI as there's many interactions that cause this to fail such as Jira refreshing the UI on any resizes as just one example - so a whole state management system was required to work around Jiras interactions. I believe the output of ALL interactions now feels smooth and native, hopefully users will doubt that this even caused me huge headaches!

Triggers

Triggers were difficult to feel intuitive - I created a state management system for this that allows them to correctly run and animate in order so that the user can know what's happening.

Triggers were also difficult as they require specific functionality that completely changes how the application is used or display which mean that there was many edge cases. They should also be executable in any order and work correctly which causes some difficult issues and one of the main reasons that the state management was required.

Documentation

Alongside the application, I also created comprehensive documentation of usecases and how to use each part of the application - this required the full creation of a new website to house this information

Documentation can be found at harmonize pro docs

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Look and Feel

I believe that the application feels very intuitive and native as well as meets my original vision which was super difficult to do while working full time as I imagine the other contestants can attest to!

Marketplace

I did a huge push to get listed within the marketplace so that I could quickly get feedback from users - this had a whole range of stresses but I am happy to say that some users have already signed up and provided feedback which I am currently implementing - including a new Trigger that allows users to automatically create a pull request!

link to marketplace

Docs

I create a full website to house comprehensive documentation for usecase of Nesty and how it can be used which can be found here harmonize pro docs

What we learned

I learned SO much more about Jira and forge, talking to users has been a true highlight for gaining insight and trying to push the product to a wider usecase than my original vision!!

What's next for Checklist Workflows: Nested & Automated — Nesty

Next up, as Nesty is already on the marketplace I will keep talking to users, fixing any issues and pushing the product forward to meet the needs of all Jira users. I believe this is a super flexible application so I look forward to expanding it's capabilities further.

As part of feedback I am already in the process of adding a new trigger that allows us to automatically create a pull request for a branch once conditions are completed. With more discussions I believe that the sky is the limit in terms of the impact across a huge range of Jira users.

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