This is the 55th of our Monday Night Specials, a series of virtual events with voices from the Atlassian ecosystem.

Bevy: https://ace.atlassian.com/j/gpu8sccqv5aem/

Meetup: Ivan Lobotka, eea: GeoData for Jira | Meetup

Slides:

Community Post: RSVP: Ivan Bolotka, GeoData for Jira - Atlassian Community

1 Presenter: Ivan Lobotka
2 Core Concepts:
- 2.1 Store location in your issue
- 2.2 Dataset
- 2.3 Display location data on map
- 2.4 Use location data for automation
- 2.5 Offered post-functions
- 2.6 External 3rd party services
3 Examples of geodata usage in Jira
4 Images

Presenter: Ivan Lobotka

I have 8 years of experience with process digitization and have gone through different roles and levels - from Jira user through business analyst to consultant.Usually, I am approached with one question - who will I attend the meeting with or how many consultants or process analysts will come with me?As I’ve dealt with process optimization and digitization from many different aspects, I can instantly work on your needs and requirements and propose solutions for you together with our team.

About EEA communication solutions

For over 25 years, we have been sharing our passion for information, research, integration, consulting, and software development with customers around the world. Thanks to our individual approach to IT solutions and the use of state-of-the-art technologies, EEA is one of the leaders in the Slovak IT industry.

Openness, information sharing, and fair-play are the values that the EEA promotes both internally and society-wide.

We are a "software house" focused on modern solutions and the most advanced technologies. We have been working in the IT sector for 27 years and we have been providing services in the areas of Software Development and Integration, IT Consulting and Outsourcing. Since 2005, we have been strategically focusing on the technology of one of the most progressive IT companies - Atlassian. We trust their concept, strategy and product and we are excellent in them. In 2019, we achieved a Platinum Solution partnership with Atlassian.

Our Atlassian EEA team, develops various specific extensions for Atlassian products that bring new functionality to these systems and thus extend their use. It often happens that customers cannot find the application they need on the market, so they can contact us to make the tailor-made solution.

One of these JIRA applications is Geodata, which allows to add a GPS position to Jira’s tasks. You can display these tasks on a map, filter them, and then fully utilize Jira’s functionality to solve such tasks.

With the help of Geodata it clearly displays selected information on suggestions viewable on map.

GeoData for Jira enrich your Jira issues with amazing functionality by adding the location (address) and presenting the issues on the map.

You can use core Jira functionalities like different issue types or workflows to solve issues from your daily business, but with GeoData features you can do more. You can visualize your tickets on a map and see your data in a new perspective. You can easily view issues that are close to each other, find hot-spots form a heatmap view and much more. Jira Service Management customers can add information about the location directly into their requests and it helps you to handle them effectively.

GeoData for Jira functionality:

The functionality of GeoData is for 2 categories of users:

Users without a Jira account, such as citizens, who can use Jira to report issues from their neighborhood. If public access is allowed for such groups of people, they can create issues and position them to a specific place. Their inputs can be viewed on a map, either directly in Jira or using technologies like gadgets. If you allow them to vote through our Voting Extension for Jira application or comment through Disqus Comments for Jira integration, you can obtain valuable information from the crowd.
Users with a Jira account and appropriate permissions, such as managers, service team members of local government employees, will be able to use full functionality of GeoData application like
- Create issues directly from the map view,
- Edit location using drag and drop feature,
- Transform address to geographical coordinates automatically,
- Show representation of your issues on the map and see their location,
- Filter objects shown on a map by specified attributes and categories like status and issue type,
- Use dashboard gadget,
- Publish datasets using REST interface and integrate them with your applications and systems,
- Use location information in different custom fields and create links to external portals, such as cadastral portal,
- Use custom OpenStreetMap based map tile servers, which are best suited for your business needs,
- External linking to web services like Google Maps, Weather services
- Plan a trip using Google Maps routes.
- GeoData Insight object Custom field for Google route

We also customized Jira Service Management Users functionality:

Entering an address via the Jira Service Management portal,
Assigning tasks to responsible persons based on the Geographical location of the address of the assigned task, or the address of the Requester

Core Concepts:

Store location in your issue

GeoData Location custom field saves the information about location to Jira issue and places the issue on the map (Map pin/point). Afterwards you can see the locality information as address in issue (text field). The translation between the geographical coordinates and the address is performed using external geocoding services. You can display it on the map or display this information as a hyperlink to an external page.

Dataset

GeoData Dataset is a collection of data that serves as a filter to display just the information that meets your needs in the map view.

The concept of the GeoData Dataset can be easily understood as follows. From all the issues in Jira, use the JQL filter to select the ones that interest you. Use the dataset configuration to determine which fields of tasks you want to see, and to determine according to which field which field you want to differentiate the tasks (color schema). Depending on the fields you select, you can also filter the data to display only the information that interests you on the map.

Display location data on map

You can display the saved location in the issue on the map in several ways. The simplest is the map view available directly from the Issue view page; you can see the location easily when you view the details of the currently displayed issue.

A more comprehensive way to view location data is to use a map view, where you can easily view data on multiple issues on a single map. The datasets explained above are used for such data display.

Use location data for automation

Atlassian Jira functionalities such as workflows or post-functions provides excellent possibilities for process automation. In the GeoData app we try to offer options for using this out-of-the-box functionality and extend it with site-related functionality.

There is many companies and organizations that collect input from people by crowdsourcing. A typical example is municipal organizations and services that are interested in using people's suggestions for better management and maintenance. There are a lot of people who have smartphones with a GPS receiver. In the GeoData app, we provide post-functions that automatically read the GPS coordinates in the photo metadata and set the location based on them. Therefore, it is not necessary to duplicate the entered data and the process works automatically.

We allow users to define their custom areas (Areas), which may cover the official administrative division of the place of their interest or areas that directly represent their business requirements and processes. For such areas, we enable, for example, certain default assignee for the area and when creating a new task, assign them directly to the person who is responsible for solving it.

Offered post-functions

Photo with GPS metadata → Location
Address (string) → Location
Location → Assignee

External 3rd party services

In the GeoData app we use freely available data from OpenStreetMap. Thus, users have access to a large and ever-expanding database created by people from all over the world. Thanks to this, it is possible in a simple and efficient way to translate geographical coordinates to the address (and vice versa), or to use such map materials (tiles) that best suit the customer's needs in a simple and efficient way.

Examples of geodata usage in Jira

Bratislava New Town – Participatory Budget:

The Participatory Budget Office registers, handles suggestions from citizens in Jira and publishes official statements. With the help of Geodata it clearly displays selected information on suggestions viewable on map on its Citizens Portal. Selected data can be published as Opendata datasets through the REST interface with GeoJSON and it is possible to display the data on maps in other systems. In addition, the solution is used to visualize pavement repair and displaying of completed and planned projects in the city

Company from the industrial sector

Map of customer’s installed measuring and fire extinguishing equipment

Further use is for customer’s service and business team. Client can display a list of installed devices at his customers. It uses map visualization to manage onsite service interventions, so they optimize the work path using the map.