Marketplace Monday: Table Grid Editor

Introduction

Have you ever wondered how you could use JIRA for

• Collecting data from surveys during telemarketing actions
• Keeping track of test execution
• creating and managing offers and quotes
• maintaining your infrastructure configuration

The table grid plugin is a JIRA custom field plugin allowing you to view and edit database data in a tabular fashion.
It allows you to store detailed information in an external database while keeping process related information within JIRA.

Example - Use JIRA as a quote management system

Every business needs to make quotes.  If you happen to use JIRA as your issue tracker and project management tool, why wouldn't you use JIRA also to track the quotes you send out.  It's easy for ensuring the quotes are prepared well, validated, sent out, and discussed with your prospect.  Customer information can be tracked as custom fields in the field configuration, and reports can be created to know how large your sales funnel is.

What about line items?

The only difficulty is how will you track the line items in the quote itself.  You want to use a predefined list of products you can deliver, and ensure the right pricing is applied.  Enter the table grid editor, which allows you to edit line items in the context of the JIRA issue and store the results in an external table.

See the plugin in action

Configuring a table grid editor custom field is easy

The table grid editor is a custom field which can be customized to your needs, by setting properties in the 'default value' of the custom field

Properties allow you to specify the behavior of the grid, the columns, the connections to the database

grid.columns = product, comment, unit, price
 
 
col.unit=Unit Price
col.unit.type=number
col.unit.minValue=1
col.unit.width=50

This approach has 2 major advantages

• Flexibility
  Specifying the behavior of the grid and the columns is very flexible and allows for a huge number of use cases. 
• Reuse
  The configuration can be copy/pasted to other grids and/or versioned
  
  

Supports multiple column types

Lists are dynamic

When creating a quote, you want only to show the products which can be delivered.   The grid must be configured in such a way that the product drop-down list contains only the active products.  Enter dynamic list support where you can specify a SQL query which will initialize the grid.

col.product=Product Code
col.product.type=list
col.product.width=100
col.product.query=select name, id from products where status='A'
col.product.ds=productData

Lists can also be initialized from the options of customfield select lists.

Grids are dynamic

Another use case supported by the custom field is when JIRA should be used to track a telephone survey action.
The table grid can be initialized with a list of questions from a survey table.  The responses can then be captured into the grid table.

gd.columns=question,answer
gd.table=electionPollResults
gd.query=select question from pollQuestions
gd.query.ds=gridds
 
 
col.question=Question
col.question.type=String
col.question.editable=False
 
col.answer=Answers
col.answer.type=list
...
 

The query itself can be made dependent on the values of a custom field such that a different list of questions are asked depending on for instance the gender.

Connect to multiple databases 

Do you need to collect customer information from an oracle database, while getting your infrastructure configuration, the table grid editor allows you to tackle some daunting integration problems.  Supports multiple database systems

• Oracle
• MySQL
• PostgreSQL

Many Configuration options

There are over 80 different configuration options allowing to setup the grid just as you need it.
Check out the full property index.
 

Support

Idalko is there to support you whenever you get lost in the configuration of the plugin.  Contact us at all times on our support site.

What's next
 

• Support for master/detail  configurations
  Setup an issue with multiple grids such as 'customer' /  'Department' / 'Configuration'.
  Initialize the content of the second grid with the selection of the first grid, and the third grid with the selection in the second grid.
• Grid Gadgets
  Display a query on a dashboard.
• Grid search 
  Search for issues having particular values.  For instance if you want to use JIRA as a Recruitment management tool, you will be able to find all java developers for which you have assessed their skills. 
  
  issue in grid(Skills, "skill like 'java%' and experience > 4") and status = "Available"