Still, there are certain useful features that are missing from Jira to this day.
For example, creating a reusable process template for onboarding a new hire is not easy. This is especially sad given you probably want everyone to have a great experience during their first day at the new job. The first impression counts!
Sure, there are certain workarounds. For example, you can use issue cloning or field customization. Unfortunately, these and other workarounds come prepackaged with their own drawbacks and limitations.
This article will explore a simpler option for creating an intuitive and efficient template for an onboarding process inside Jira. We will be using two third-party apps. Both of them have a free trial, so you can check and make sure that the approach is a nice fit for your team.
Without further ado, let’s hop into creating an onboarding template with Smart Checklist and Smart Templates for Jira.
What goes into a new employee onboarding task inside Jira?
Generally speaking, onboarding a newcomer is a complex process that involves people from many teams, such as procurement, security, HR, the team the person will be working at, and the person themselves.
Everyone who’s involved in the process will have their tasks.
- The HR might want to schedule onboarding meetings and feedback sessions, meet the person in the office on their first day, post information about their start date, survey them regarding the onboarding experience, etc.
- Security will need to create the necessary accounts and grant appropriate permissions.
- Procurement needs to purchase the hardware.
- The legal team needs to manage the paperwork.
- The manager needs to prepare the onboarding plan and introduce the person to their team members.
This list goes on and on.
But isn’t this just an onboarding checklist? Well, yes and no. While it is true that most HR teams have documentation and ToDo’s written down, most of the documentation is usually scarce and scattered. Moreover, these ToDo’s are rarely standartized across different teams and departments.
An onboarding template in Jira, on the other hand, is a selection of issues with very clear and detailed tasks for everyone involved in the onboarding process. You can set up an Epic with specific issue types, child tasks, subtasks, labels, instructions, and assignees, making sure that everyone involved in the process knows their scope.
How to create an onboarding template in Jira?
For the purpose of this example, I will create an Epic for the onboarding journey. This Epic will have separate tasks for the newbie, their manager, and the HR person. Keep in mind that this is just an example. Feel free to customize the process to fit within your team’s flow.
Step 1: Download Smart Templates from the Atlassian Marketplace
None of the steps I will describe in this article are rocket science, but this one is probably the easiest. All you have to do isfind and install the Smart Templates app from the Atlassian Marketplace.