Environment Booking & Reservation

Context

You have defined your Environments and you would like people to book your Environments for different kind of activities like UAT, demos, technical maintenance, etc.

Prerequisite

Your Environments are already defined in Apwide Golive.
Not yet? Follow our Get started

For this use case, we are relying on Jira core features: Jira issue types, Custom Fields, Workflows, etc.

On Jira Cloud, you can configure your Environment Booking within a team-managed or within a company-managed Jira project. How do I know? / What’s the difference?

We recommend team-managed projects so that you can get more autonomy with the setup of custom fields, screens and workflows.

1A. Create your Booking Request in a team-managed Jira Project

Go to section 1B if you are using a company-managed Jira project

a) Create an Environment Custom Field (or reuse existing one)

Create a Golive Custom Field to store the Environments linked to your Booking Requests. You can name it “Environment(s) to book” and add a link to a shared Timeline where you will show all Booking Requests.

You cannot update the field description once it is created. If you need to change it, you will have to create a new custom field.

Related Golive Cloud documentation

Create an Environment Custom Field

b) Create a new Issue Type in your Jira Project

In your project settings, create a new “Booking Request” issue type and add the following fields:

1. Environment(s) to book (created in the previous step)

2. Start time (Time stamp field)

3. End time (Time stamp field)

c) Customize the workflow to your needs

Go to section 2 to continue your setup

1B. Create your Booking Request in a company-managed Jira Project

Skip this section 1B if you are in a team-managed Jira project and already performed section 1A

a) Create a new Jira Issue Type to support your Environment Booking requests

For instance, you can name it “Booking Request”. Associate your newly created Issue Type with an existing Jira Project, or create a new Jira Project to be used for your Booking Requests (it’s up to you).

Related Jira Cloud documentation

How to create a new Issue Type?

How to associate Issue Types with Projects?

b) Create an Environment Custom Field (or reuse existing one)

Create a Golive Custom Field to store the Environments linked to your Booking Requests. You can name it “Environment(s) to book” and add a link to a shared Timeline where you will show all Booking Requests.

You cannot update the field description once it is created. If you need to change it, you will have to create a new custom field.

Related Golive Cloud documentation

Create an Environment Custom Field

c) Create Jira Date Custom Fields (or reuse existing ones)

Create two Jira Custom Field of type “Date Time Picker” to store the beginning of your Booking Requests. (you can name it “Start time”) and the end of your Booking Requests (you can name it “End time”).

Related Golive Cloud documentation

How to create a Jira custom field?

d) Create a Screen for your Booking Request Issue Type

Add the fields you defined in STEP 2 and 3 in your new screen. It should look like this:

Related Golive Cloud documentation

How to create and activate a screen?

e) Create a workflow for your Booking Request Issue Type

The workflow is really up to you, you can add as many steps and approvals as you need. Here is an example of very simple workflow:

Related Golive Cloud documentation

How to create and activate a workflow?

2. Test your Booking Request

From your Jira Project, create a new Booking Request and make sure it works. Adjust if needed.

3. Create a Booking Requests Calendar

Create a new Golive Timeline (more info: Timelines) Add a new Issue Calendar by typing “Booking Request” (or the name you choose for your Issue Type):

By default, all Calendar information should be there. Double-check the fields mapping to make sure they are the Custom Fields you have created before.

After clicking on “Done”, you should see the Booking Requests on your Timeline, with their statuses.

Conclusion

Congrats! Now you have a Calendar displaying your Booking Requests and their statuses.

You can reschedule your Booking Requests on the Timeline with drag-and-drop: the “Start time” and “End time” will be updated and the requester will be notified by Jira.

You can also move the Booking Requests from one Environment Swimlane to another in order to update the Environments booked by the request. Notification will also be sent to the requester.

To go further

Questions?

Jira is very powerful for its workflows, that’s why we have decided to rely on it for our Booking System, instead of implementing our own system. The setup may be a little complex for Jira beginners, that’s why we offer free assistance for this configuration.

If you need our help, contact us.