Plugio Panels Documentation

Plugio Panels — Progress, Charts & Related Issues for Jira puts live, configured widgets on the work item itself. A project admin builds a panel once — a set of widgets with their sources, formats and color rules — targets it at a work item type, and from then on everyone on the team sees it on every matching work item, with no action of their own.

Panels render on two surfaces: the sidebar in the right column of the work item (compact widget forms, always visible) and the wide panel in the main column (large forms — full tables, trees, grids and date strips). Each widget belongs to exactly one surface, so the compact and the wide reads are designed separately rather than squeezed.

Every widget reads either the work item you are on — its fields, dates, status history, where it sits in the hierarchy — or a set of work items around it: subtasks, children, the full hierarchy, linked work items, or any JQL query.

Installation & Setup

Setup is five steps, and two of them are one-time-only. Read this section in order — the wide panel in particular needs one deliberate click that is easy to miss.

1 · Install the app

1. 1 Install Plugio Panels from the Atlassian Marketplace, or from Settings → Apps → Find new apps in your Jira site.
2. 2 No global configuration is needed. Panels are configured per project, by that project's admins.

2 · Open the config screen

All configuration lives inside the project, so you never leave the project you are configuring:

1. 1 Open the project.
2. 2 Go to Project settings (left sidebar, at the bottom).
3. 3 Choose Apps → Plugio Panels.

3 · Build your first panel

The first time you open the screen the project has no panels, so the page shows the empty state:

1. 1 Click New panel. The template gallery opens.
2. 2 Under Show on, pick the work item type this panel is for — the list is your project's real types, custom types included.
3. 3 Pick a template. Each one fills both surfaces with a widget set that makes sense for that type; Blank starts empty. A template is only a starting point — everything stays freely editable.
4. 4 The editor opens with the panel pre-filled and a real work item from your project loaded into the preview. Adjust widgets, add or remove them, drag them between the two zones.
5. 5 Click Save.

4 · The sidebar — no further setup

The sidebar surface needs nothing after the save. Open any work item of the targeted type and the Plugio Panels section is there in the right column, below Details, for every user. There is no per-user action, no Apps button, no opt-in.

5 · The wide panel — one-time setup, then permanent for everyone

The wide panel lives in the main column of the work item, and Jira requires it to be added once per project. This is the step people miss — do it right after your first save and the panel is then permanent for the whole team.

1. 1 Open any work item of the type your panel targets.
2. 2 Click the Apps button in the work item's action bar and choose Plugio Panels. The panel appears in the main column, below the description.
3. 3 This is the important part. Open the panel's ••• menu and choose Show for all work items.
4. 4 Done — the wide panel now renders on every work item, for every user in the project. Nobody else has to touch the Apps button.

Permissions & data

The Two Surfaces

Understanding the difference between the two surfaces is the single most useful thing to know when designing a panel.

The Panel List

Once the project has panels, the config screen's home page is the panel list.

Priority: one panel per work item

A work item shows exactly one panel — the first one in the list whose condition it matches. Panels are evaluated top-down:

• Hidden panels are skipped entirely.
• A panel matches if the work item's type equals its Show when type, and — if the panel has one — the work item also satisfies its JQL condition.
• The first match wins; nothing below it is considered.

That makes ordering meaningful: put the narrow panels above the broad ones. A “Payments Bug” panel with the condition component = Payments must sit above a general “Bug Triage” panel, or the general one will always win first.

Project Settings

Three options are project-wide rather than per widget, because every widget has to agree on them. Open them with Project settings in the panel list header — it is reachable even when the project has no panels yet.

The Panel Editor

The editor is a low-contrast mock-up of a real work item page, with the two editable zones sitting at their real positions — the Panel zone below the description in the main column, the Sidebar zone below Details in the right column. The greyed-out parts are decoration; only the dashed zones are yours.

Toolbar

Zones and widgets

• Each zone has its own Add widget button. The zone decides the surface, so the picker only asks which type you want.
• Drag a widget to reorder it inside its zone, or onto the other zone to move it to that surface. A widget with no form for the target surface — the Grid has no compact form — refuses the drop.
• Hovering a widget card reveals Settings, Duplicate and Remove.
• The Panel zone mirrors the live layout: in Tabs mode the widget titles are the tab strip and one widget shows at a time, exactly as viewers will see it.
• Drag the divider between the two columns to preview the sidebar at any realistic width, from 313 px to 560 px — the widths Jira actually gives that column.

Panel settings

The toolbar's Settings button opens the panel's own four options.

Widget settings

Clicking a widget (or its ⚙) opens the settings panel on the right. Its tabs depend on the widget type and on the surface the widget lives on:

• Every change applies live — the widget on the canvas is the preview.
• Done keeps the changes. Cancel (or Esc) restores the widget to the state it had when the panel opened.
• Nothing is written to Jira until you press Save in the toolbar.

Shared Concepts

Four ideas repeat across the widget types. Learn them once and every widget's Data tab reads the same way.

Source & Filter

Every widget that reads a set of work items asks the same question in the same framed box: which work items, and then optionally narrow them.

Filter (optional JQL)

An extra query AND-ed onto the source — issuetype != Bug, status != Done. One widget can show the whole hierarchy while the one next to it shows only what's still open.

Under the JQL source the Filter row disappears: the query already is the filter, and a hidden row that still narrowed the set would be misleading. If you switch to JQL, any filter you had is cleared rather than left applying out of sight.

Rules — conditional formatting

Rules are the color layer, and they exist on almost every type. They are bands: an ordered list of up to stops, each with a color. The band containing the current value colors it. Past the last stop, the widget's default color applies.

• From is always the previous band's end, shown read-only — the render only consumes the ends, so an editable start would lie.
• The unit is whatever the widget measures: % done for Progress, days left (or days elapsed) for Countdown, days in the current status for Timeline, the value's own unit for a KPI tile, the raw field value for a table column.
• Where a value can be “overdue” — a past due date on an unresolved work item — red is built in and needs no band. Where it can't be, there is no red floor: an age is not a missed promise, and sitting in a status is not wrong in itself.
• Tables and tile grids keep bands per column / per field, in an accordion — one card per rule-capable column, its band colors visible at a glance.

Value format

Anywhere a number is shown, a small link next to its label chooses how it reads. The choice is display only — sums, totals and rules always work on the raw value.

• Jira's time-tracking fields are stored in seconds and are recognised as durations automatically.
• Very long calendar durations roll up so they stay readable — “2y 10mo”, not “1035d”.
• Non-numeric columns have nothing to choose, so the link simply isn't there.

Columns & fields

Every table, tree and tile grid picks its columns from one catalogue: your site's real fields, custom fields included, plus three derived columns Jira doesn't store:

• Order in the editor is reading order: top-to-bottom in the list = left-to-right in the table.
• Marquee system fields get purpose-built cells — the type icon, the status badge, the assignee avatar, the priority icon — so a panel table looks like Jira, not like a spreadsheet.
• Numeric columns sum in the footer, in the same format as their cells.
• Clicking a row opens that work item; where a widget shows only part of a set, an icon opens the full set in Jira search.

Widgets

Ten types, in the two families the picker uses. Remember that every type has two forms: the compact one for the sidebar and the large one for the wide panel. A type's settings differ per surface, and the panel only shows the ones that apply.

About this work item

These read the work item the panel opens on — no source to configure.

Countdown

Days to or since a date. A deadline, or an age. The day count is computed at paint time, so it never goes stale in a cached page.

Wide panel · large Sidebar · compact

The same number over a date strip — the target between the start anchor and today, with other dates marked.

The number and its date line.

Data tab

The large form is the date strip: the target placed between the start anchor and today, so the shape of the deadline — how much of the window is already spent — is visible at a glance. Counting up, the strip becomes the work item's lifetime. Neither form has an on/off switch; they are the forms, not options.

Rules band the number: days left (e.g. up to 0 red, up to 3 yellow) or days elapsed.

Parent

Where this work item sits. The ancestor chain — parent → epic → initiative — with each level's own children's progress beside it. Rows open the ancestor.

Wide panel · large Sidebar · compact

The same chain as cards — type and key over the summary, a wide bar and the counts spelled out.

One line per level, each with its progress.

Progress per level is always on — a level without its children's state is just a breadcrumb, and Jira already has one. Compact is one line per level; the large form is the same chain as cards, with a wide bar and the counts spelled out.

Release

The fix version this work item ships in. The release-date countdown plus the completion of everything in that version. The version is read from the work item's fix versions — the first unreleased one wins.

Wide panel · large Sidebar · compact

The countdown as stat tiles, the bar, and every work item in the version as a table — the current one marked.

Version name, the release countdown, the completion bar.

Fields

Chosen fields of this work item, big and color-coded. Jira's own Details panel lists the same fields; this one makes the few that matter large, and lets rules paint them.

Wide panel · large Sidebar · compact

The same tiles across the full width — badges, avatars, chips and formatted numbers.

Tiles at one or two per row.

Timeline

Status history — where this work item waited, and how long. The number that makes someone act is “how long has it been sitting where it is now”, so that is the headline; the proportional band underneath is the context.

Wide panel · large Sidebar · compact

The same band plus the real transition table — what moved, when, who moved it, how long it sat.

Time in the current status, the proportional band, and the muted age line.

Segment colors come from Jira's status categories, and durations follow the project's Day length.

About related work items

These read a set around the current work item, so each one opens with a Source.

Progress

Progress of the child tree. The ratio widget: a bar, gauge or donut with the percentage, and — on the wide panel — the hierarchy tree that is the ratio's evidence.

Wide panel · large Sidebar · compact

The same hero plus the ratio’s evidence: the work-breakdown tree with indent, collapse and a roll-up footer that sums the numeric columns.

The percentage with its bar, gauge or donut — segments in Jira’s status-category colors.

Data tab

Appearance

Segment colors always follow Jira's status categories. Rules band the percentage: up to 40 red, up to 70 yellow, and so on — the band containing the current % colors the bar's done segment, the gauge arc or the donut ring along with the number.

KPI

A grid of numbers, each with its own source. The most configurable type: you define a list of values — aggregations and formulas — and the visible ones are the tiles, in list order.

Wide panel · large Sidebar · compact

Tiles across 2–4 columns, and clicking one lists the work items behind its value with an “open in Jira” action.

Value tiles at one or two per row, each colored by its own bands.

Defining a value

Each row in the list is one value. Expanding it shows the definition:

Formulas

A + Formula row references other values by label and does arithmetic on them:

• Operators + - * /, parentheses, and the functions round(v, decimals), abs, min, max, floor, ceil, coalesce(v, fallback).
• A missing or empty operand renders “–” rather than a silent zero. coalesce is the escape hatch when you want a 0 instead.
• The formula field validates as you type and names the exact problem — an unknown reference, a missing bracket, a word typed without braces.

Appearance & Rules

List

Related work items as a table. Columns, sorting, grouping, numeric footers and cell rules. This is the widget that replaces Jira's fixed Linked issues section.

Wide panel · large Sidebar · compact

The full table: free column set, group headers with counts, per-group Σ lines and a numeric footer.

Key + summary + one configurable column, capped at 3–10 rows with a “+N more” tail.

Data tab

Appearance

Chart

Group the source by any field. A donut or horizontal bars — status breakdown, workload by assignee, points by component.

Wide panel · large Sidebar · compact

The same chart scaled up, with the legend beside the donut instead of under it.

Donut or bars, legend underneath.

Grid

Two fields as a grid. Probability × impact, priority × status, component × assignee — the risk-matrix shape with free axes. Wide panel only: a real grid can't say anything at 300 px, so the picker shows it disabled for the sidebar.

Cell color encodes one thing only: density. The tint ramps over a single accent, normalized against the busiest cell. Clicking a cell opens the work items behind it, with one action to open the same set in Jira.

Templates

Templates are the creation step only — they fill in a widget set, and everything stays freely editable afterwards. There is one rich template per core work item type, each filling both surfaces, plus Blank.

The gallery filters itself to the template for the target you picked, plus Blank. A custom work item type matches no template, so all of them stay available as starting points.

Copy From Project

Building the same panels project by project isn't work anybody should do twice. Copy from project — on the empty state of a project with no panels yet — searches your browsable projects and brings the chosen project's whole Plugio Panels configuration over: every panel, every widget, every rule, and the project-level settings.

• A project with no panels configured says so on its row rather than failing silently.
• Custom field ids are the same across a Jira site, so copied widgets keep their fields. If you copy into a project whose workflow lacks a status you had ticked under Done means, re-check that list.
• The copy replaces the current project's configuration — which is why it is offered only when there is nothing to lose.

Troubleshooting

I saved a panel but nothing appears on the work item

Three things to check, in order:

• Reload the page once. Jira briefly caches the condition that decides whether an app surface exists on a project. After a project's first save this can delay the surfaces by a page load.
• Does the work item match? The panel's Show when type must equal the work item's type, and its JQL condition — if it has one — must also match. A higher panel in the list may be matching first.
• Is it the wide panel you're missing? That one needs the one-time Apps → Show for all work items setup — see step 5.

“Plugio Panels” isn't in the work item's Apps menu

The app's surfaces are hidden on projects with no panels, by design. Create and save a panel in that project first, then reload the work item.

The wide panel is visible to me but not to my team

It was added to that one work item without being promoted. Open its ••• menu and choose Show for all work items.

Someone removed the wide panel

Jira's Remove takes the panel off the work item view for everyone, and Jira allows any user to do it. Nothing is lost: your panel definitions live in the project, so re-adding it through Apps → Plugio Panels brings everything back unchanged. If it keeps happening, the usual cause is a panel that is too tall or too noisy — trim it.

The sidebar section disappeared

Check, in order: Project settings → Sidebar section is set to Hide; every panel in the project is hidden; or no panel targets this work item's type. The sidebar has no user-side hide, so it is always one of these three.

“Based on the first 500 work items — this scope has more”

The widget's source matched more work items than the engine reads, so its numbers cover the first 500. Narrow the source (direct children instead of the full hierarchy) or add a filter until the note disappears.

Two people see different numbers on the same panel

By design — every query runs with the viewer's own Jira permissions. Someone without access to a linked project simply doesn't see its work items in the counts.

A widget says “configure” or shows no data

Open its settings. Either a required setting is missing (a Grid without an axis field, a KPI value without a source) or the source genuinely resolved to nothing — a work item with no subtasks, no links of that phrase, no fix version. The editor preview uses real data, so what you see there is what viewers get.

A widget warns about a missing field

It references a field that doesn't exist here — common after copying panels from another project or when a custom field was deleted. Re-pick the field in the widget's settings; the rest of the panel is unaffected.

The preview is empty in the editor

If the project has no work item of the panel's targeted type yet, there is nothing to preview. Use the work item picker in the toolbar to point the preview at any other work item.

Numbers don't match a Jira filter I ran

The layers apply together: the widget's Source AND its Filter AND, for a KPI value, its own where. The other common surprise is Done means — if it is set to specific statuses, a work item in a Done-category status you didn't tick does not count as done.

A duration reads differently than in Jira

Jira's time-tracking fields deliberately keep Jira's 8-hour work-day convention so they match the field beside them. The project's Day length applies to elapsed time — status history, ages — not to estimates.

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