FAQ
Questions people actually ask
If yours is not here, ask — the answer is usually short, and if it is not, that is worth knowing too.
Getting started
Where does ImproveDesk appear in Jira?
In four places: a project page holding the register, board, dashboard and settings; a project settings page for configuration; an issue panel showing which improvements a given issue contributes to; and a global portfolio page that lets you pick which project register to open.
Does it work with Jira Service Management?
Yes. It works with Jira and Jira Service Management projects alike — improvements are scoped per project, and the register is the same wherever it is opened.
Do we have to roll it out across every project at once?
No. Improvements are scoped per project and configuration is per project, so you can start with a single team, prove it in a service review or two, and expand when it has earned its place.
Can we import our existing spreadsheet?
There is no bulk import in the app today. Registers are usually tens of records rather than thousands, and re-entering them is often the moment the stale rows get retired. If you have a large register to migrate, get in touch and we will talk it through.
How it works
Who can see and change improvements?
Anyone who can browse the Jira project can see the register, raise improvements, edit them, comment and move them through the lifecycle. Changing project settings and permanently deleting an improvement require the Jira "administer projects" permission. There is no separate ImproveDesk user list to maintain.
Can somebody mark an improvement verified without doing the work?
Not without leaving a trail. Verified can only be reached from Implemented, and verification requires either a realised benefit figure or at least one recorded measure. Every step is an audit event naming who made it and when.
What happens if two people edit the same improvement at once?
The second write is refused rather than silently overwriting the first. This is the normal case for a register reviewed in a monthly meeting, and a last-write-wins overwrite there quietly loses somebody’s benefit numbers.
Can we delete an improvement?
A project administrator can. It permanently removes the improvement, its comments and its entire audit trail, and the app says so before you confirm. Archiving is the reversible alternative: it keeps the record and its history and hides it from the default view.
What is the difference between the RICE score and the composite score?
RICE is the standard formula — reach times impact times confidence, divided by effort. The composite score is configurable: you set three weights per project, applied to the benefit case (forecast against cost), the effort size, and the priority on the record. An improvement nobody has scored returns no score at all rather than zero, so it is never ranked alongside work genuinely assessed as low value.
What counts as "stale" or "overdue"?
Overdue means an open improvement is past its target date; the target day itself is treated as inclusive. Stale means it has not been updated within the threshold you configure per project. Both are derived, so nobody has to maintain a flag.
Data and security
Where is our data stored?
In Atlassian’s Forge app storage, inside your own tenancy, inheriting your site’s data residency. ImproveDesk has no external service, no vendor database and no analytics endpoint.
Can your team see our improvement register?
No. The app runs in your tenancy and we have no access path to its data.
What permissions does the app request, and why?
Reading issues and projects for the linked delivery work, reading user profiles to resolve account ids to names, reading project permissions to establish what the signed-in user may do, and app storage. The app also declares write access to issues for creating a delivery issue from an improvement — an action that is built but not yet reachable from the interface, so it currently goes unused. Each scope is listed with its purpose on the security page.
Is the audit trail really immutable?
There is no update path and no delete path for an individual event. The only way to remove history is for a project administrator to delete the whole improvement, which is a deliberate, confirmed and logged action. Events also carry a per-improvement sequence number, so a gap would be detectable.
Reporting
Can we get the data out?
Yes — export the current filtered view to CSV, 34 columns covering the whole record with account ids resolved to display names. Leading formula characters are neutralised so the file is safe to open in a spreadsheet.
Why is the dashboard trend empty when we start?
The trend is drawn from a weekly snapshot job, so it needs at least two runs before there is a line to draw. Everything else on the dashboard is computed live from the register and is populated from your first improvement.
How do we know the scheduled jobs are running?
Every run is written to a run log, successful or failed, and the register banner states the age of the last sweep. A digest that has stopped advancing looks exactly like a healthy backlog, so the app tells you rather than letting it hide.
Still stuck?
Email hello@example.com and tell us what you are trying to do. Include your Jira project type and roughly how many improvements you expect to hold — it usually shortens the conversation.