Checklist for JIRA - Add-on review

I came across this new add on called "Checklist for JIRA" and it seems quite interesting add-on. The Overview of this add-on on the marketplace says "Stop using Subtasks for simple tracking. Use Checklist instead. Ideal for Definition of Done, Acceptance Criteria and ToDo lists".

So what I understand is that this add-on aims to repace sub-tasks in JIRA with its checklist feature. I guess it makes sense. Sometimes you don't need to worry too much about the details of the sub-tasks and a scenario when certain tasks just needs to be done without worrying too much about their details. Like recurring activities, to-do or checklist of things for a particular activity.

Let us take a look at this add-on.

1. Install the add-on as you would normally do from the "Find new add-ons".
2. Create a new custom field of type "Checklist". It is like a normal Select list field when creating. I named the field "Simple Checklist".
3. Add this field on the screen.
4. Checklist options can have their own status - "Not Applicable", "In Progress" and "Blocked". The person working on the issue can also add more items in the checklist. I need to check the permissions for this.
5. There is a flag for the options to set them as Mandatory.
6. Once all the options are checked the overall status of the custom field will be displayed as "COMPLETED".
7. Once all the options are checked the overall status of the custom field will be displayed as "ALL MANDATORY"
8. There are some useful JQL functions that can help the user to search for the issues based on the items in the checklist.
a. "Simple Checklist" = allItemsChecked(): Returns all the issues where this custom field has all the options checked.
b. "Simple Checklist" = allMandatoryItemsChecked(): Returns all the issues where this custom field has all the mandatory options checked.
c. "Simple Checklist" = checkedItem("Option 7") : Returns all the issues where this custom field has "Option 7" checked. This function will take only one argument.
d. "Simple Checklist" = uncheckedItem("Option 1"): Returns all the issues where this custom field has "Option 1" unchecked.

Another observations about this add-on

1. The options set up by the JIRA Administration for the custom field are displayed to the users but the user working on the ticket can add more options only for that specific issue. I could not find permission to control this i.e. stopping users from adding more options on the fly for that specific issue.
2. This custom field can be displayed in the "Issue Navigator" "List View".
3. The link to the documentation of this add-on was broken on the marketplace listing.
4. The new items that are added by the user can be reordered. Only the new items though.
5. Use @username and dd/mm/yyyy in the option and the syntax will be changed for these options. Though the @username will not be a link to the user name. It will just display a user icon in front of the name but the username can be invalid. It think it more for the syntax rather than functionality.
6. I don't think more statuses can be added

Further Configurations

When you configure the custom field there will be some further configurations that can be done on the custom field.

1. On the main Configure Custom Field there will an option to set "Discretionary Options". Basically all the Options that are added in the custom field will be mandatory but here you can check which Option (Value) you want to be Optional. (little weird english here :))
2. Click on Edit Parameters to change more configurations. These will allow you to change the number of Options to be displayed on the issue, emphasize mandatory items and few more helpful configurations. You can also specify which Project Roles can edit this field.

Conclusion: Overall I like this add-on. Although the use cases are not convincing in some scenario where this can checklist thing can be achieved by just using a Custom Field. The JQL functions are quite useful and bring value to this add-on. The add-on works both on JIRA Cloud and Server. There is also a Data Center and JIRA Service Desk compatibility.

Checklist for JIRA version: 3.1.13
JIRA: 7.4.0