Documentation — Jira App

Step 1 — Game details

• Game name (required) — e.g. "Sprint 42 planning".
• Estimation field — every numeric field on your Jira site is offered, and the app pre-selects your Story Points field when it finds one. Final estimates are saved to this field on each issue. You can also choose Don't save to a field; estimates are then recorded as issue comments only.
• Card deck — pick one of the built-in decks (previewed live as you choose) or define your own:

Three toggles control how rounds behave:

• Auto-reveal when everyone has voted — cards flip automatically once the last active player votes; otherwise the admin reveals manually.
• Players can change their vote after reveal — useful when a quick discussion changes minds and you'd rather adjust than run a full revote.
• Private game — the game is visible only to its creator in the games list and issue panels. Others can still join if the creator shares the direct game link.

Step 2 — Add issues (optional)

The issue picker searches your whole Jira site and shows type, key, summary, epic, status, and any existing estimate for each result:

• Search box — type free text, or paste a list of issue keys ("PROJ-1, PROJ-2 PROJ-3") straight from a spreadsheet or Slack message; the picker recognises key lists automatically.
• Filters — narrow by project, issue type, and status category, with select-all across the current results.
• JQL mode — switch to raw JQL for anything the filters can't express, e.g. project = WAL AND sprint in openSprints().

You can also create the game without issues and add them live during the session — issues can be added, removed, and reordered at any time while a game runs.

Starting and joining

A new game starts as a draft; the first person to open it takes it live and the first round begins. Use the Copy game link button in the header to share the session — anyone on your Jira site who follows the link joins instantly. Participants who open an issue that's currently being voted on join through the issue panel, too.

The current issue, in full

The room shows the issue being estimated with everything the team needs to judge it: summary, description (expandable when long), status, priority, labels, reporter, assignee, comment count, the current value of the estimation field, and an Open in Jira link. Details are fetched live from Jira, so what you estimate is what's really on the ticket.

Voting rounds

• Each player picks a card from the deck. A progress bar tracks "3 of 5 voted", and when only a few votes are missing the room names who it's waiting for ("waiting for Ana & Ben").
• A round timer in the header counts up from the start of the round. It stays calm for the first minute, turns amber past 60 seconds, and red past 90 — a gentle nudge to timebox discussion. After the reveal it freezes at the round's duration.
• The admin can Reveal cards at any point, or Skip issue to push the current issue to the side and move on (skipped issues can be revisited later from the queue).

The reveal: distribution and statistics

After the reveal, the room shows a vote distribution table — each card value with its vote count and share bar — plus per-player badges in the sidebar showing exactly who voted what. Four statistics summarize the round:

• Consensus — the most-voted card (ties go to the lower card).
• Average — the mean of all numeric votes.
• Spread — lowest to highest vote.
• Alignment — a Strong / Good / Moderate / Low rating of how closely the team agrees, based on the gap between votes relative to the median.

When votes diverge widely, the room calls it out — "Widest gap: 2 ⇔ 13 — worth a 60-second discussion before saving" — so outliers get talked through instead of averaged away.

Saving and moving on

The admin's Team estimate panel is pre-filled with a suggestion: the consensus card's value or, when the consensus is a non-numeric card like "?", the deck value nearest the median of the numeric votes. Arrows step the value up and down through the deck. Save & next issue writes the estimate to Jira and advances to the next unestimated issue automatically; Revote this issue clears the round and runs it again. When the last issue is saved or skipped, the game completes and shows a results table of every issue and its estimate.

The queue sidebar

The sidebar lists the whole queue with each issue's state — estimated (with its value), currently voting, skipped, or waiting. The admin can jump to any issue by clicking it, and add more issues mid-session with the same picker used at creation. Adding issues to a completed game reopens it on the first new issue.

"The estimate couldn't be saved to the field"

The estimation field (e.g. Story Points) isn't on the screens of that issue's project. A Jira admin can add it under Project settings → Screens, or you can pick a different field for the game. The estimate is still recorded as a comment on the issue either way.

"The estimate comment couldn't be added"

The admin saving the estimate doesn't have permission to comment on that issue. Comments are posted as the saving user, so their Jira permissions apply.

I can see the cards but can't vote

You're spectating. Click Join as player in the game room sidebar. Votes are also locked after a reveal unless the game was created with "Players can change their vote after reveal".

A teammate's vote isn't showing up

Updates arrive within ~3 seconds via polling. If a participant shows as "away", they haven't had the game open in the last 45 seconds — once they reopen the issue or the room, they're active again.

Can I estimate an issue that was already estimated?

Yes — the issue panel shows the saved estimate, and the game creator gets a Vote again button that starts a fresh round on that issue.

What happens to estimates if I delete a game or uninstall the app?

Estimates and comments already written to Jira issues are your Jira data and are never touched. Deleting a game removes only the game itself and its votes; uninstalling the app removes app data per Atlassian's Forge data lifecycle.