FAQ

Most simply: Our app provides more features than the built-in Jira Announcement Banner.

Jira announcements Jira are simple banners across the top, with very little support for rich text, no ability to schedule in advance, and not much room for content. If you care about the more advanced features, our app is the way to go.

If you don't need those features, perhaps you're fine with the built-in Announcements.

Once installed, the app adds a new administrative section to manage announcements. It also exposes the ability to add a new Jira Dashboard gadget to show announcements on Jira dashboards. Actual announcements are shown as a dialog.

If there are no active announcements, Jira users will not see this app, as it does not add any other visual elements to Jira issues or other screens.

No, and for the foreseeable future that is unlikely to change.

Unfortuntately, that's the way Atlassian handles all licensing.

Regardless of how many users need an app, you end up having to pay for all users in your Jira Cloud instance. This behavior is enforced on the Atlassian side, and outside of our control.

No. You pay for the amount of Jira users your Jira instance has, regardless of how many Service Desk customers.

For example: a Jira instance with 13 Jira users, 3 Service Desk Agents, and 6000 Service Desk customers would pay for 13 users.

Of course!

We are always looking for ways to improve our apps, and the best way to do that is with your input.

Don't hesitate to email us at support@tss.io, and let us know about it.

Not at all. Simple Announcements uses the same editor Jira Cloud uses, albeit with more limited functionality. Authoring Announcements is pretty much the same as writing a description or comment for a Jira Issue.

At the moment: no.

Note: this is not a feature currently on our roadmap.

At the moment: no. It is something we are actively investigating however.

Nope. Once an announcement is deleted it is gone forever.

Not much, except recreate it. While we store previous version of announcements to keep track of read receipts, we don't have any functiaonlity to roll-back and announcement to previous version.

Not yet.

Announcements can be scoped to specific Service Desk projects, but within Jira itself, they are shown to everyone.

We have plans to add more specific targeting of announcements, which would include limiting announcements to specific projects, users, user groups, or even issue types. It's something on our roadmap, but without a concrete delivery date.

At the moment: no.

Atlassian doesn't yet provide any extension points for the Jira Cloud Automation framework. Once Atlassian gives us the ability to integrate with Jira Automation rules, we will make it available.

Not really.

Global announcements display on all issues, and we intentionally prevent users from disabling the app in specific projects, as that would defeat the purpose of the app. We are however going to add the ability for announcements to only target specific projects.

That is up to you.

Generally, when updating an announcement, we reset all read receipts, so users see the announcement again even if they have previously acknlowedged it.

We understand however that sometimes you simply want to fix a typo or other error you've made, so when saving an announcement you can choose to prevent creating a new version, which would prevent read receipts from being reset.

Yes. When saving an announcement, we automatically create a new version of the announcement, which automatically resets all read receipts for that announcement. Simply leave the checkbox to prevent creating a new version unchecked when saving.

No. You can have as many announcements as you want.

Due to technical reasons however, we only allow for 10 active (concurrent) announcements. This means, you could have 1000 total announcements, but only 10 of them can be actively shown to users.

Yes you can. The app ties into the Jira Global Permissions, allowing you to set which user groups have acces to manage announcements.

Not yet. It is something on our roadmap however.

Not yet. It is something on our roadmap however.

You can install the app directly from your Jira Cloud instance by visiting the "Apps" page, and searching for "Simple Announcements" in the "Find new Apps" screen.

Once installed, you're immediately ready to go, and can create new Announcements without any other extra configuration or changes needed to Jira.

Atlassian provides customers with a Sandbox Jira Cloud instance. You can install the app there for testing purposes.

Additionally, you could sign up for a new Jira Cloud evaluation, and install it there as well to test out things.

Jira Cloud apps are typically upgraded automatically by Atlassian whenever we make a release in the marketplace.

The exception to that is If we require additional permissions from you. In that case, you have to manually upgrade from the "Manage Apps" screen, by clicking the upgrade button, as this grants us the additional permissions we request.

You can either uninstall the app from the "Manage Apps" screen, and then reinstall from the Atlassian Marketplace.

Uninstalling the app keeps your Templates in tact, until your subscription expires. Thus, if you reinstall the app after uninstalling it, your data will come right back.

When you uninstall we hold on to your data until your subscription expires.

Once your subscription (or evaluation) is marked as expired or cancelled, we delete your data within 7 days

Announcement data is stored in our infrastructure, outside of Jira Cloud. We encrypt all data at rest, and backup our data daily.

Stored data includes the actual announcements themselves, as well as read receipts for which user has acknlowedged an announcement.

Not exactly. While there is an internal API that the app uses, the authentication mechanism is based on how Jira Cloud communicates with external apps, which does not allow customers like you to easily call this API.

We are investigating adding alternative authentication mechanisms, to allow custoemrs to call our API, and thus gain the ability to create (or retrieve) announcements outside of the Jira UI.

Not yet. We're actively investigating ways to allow custoemrs to call our API, and thus gain the ability to create (or retrieve) announcements outside of the Jira UI.

Once implemented, this should allow you to create announcements based on outside data like an OpsGenie alert, or a calendar event, etc.

Currently there is no way for you to backup (or export) your announcements. We do however run daily backups, to hedge against catastrophic failure.