Customising templates with visual builder
Introduction
Templates can be customized with the help of the following elements -
Static text - This is the text that is rendered as it is in the final release notes document generated by ARN
Output variables - These are some of the important data points regarding different Jira entities such as Project, Version, User & so on. These are replaced with actual values at the time of final release notes document generation
Custom variables - Read Manage custom variablesUNDEFINED
JQL sections - These are the configurable sections that determine which Jira issues are pulled into the final release document, what attributes (default as well as custom) for those issues are included & how the result should be laid out. This is the gist of ARN’s template visual builder
Stats & charts - These are almost similar to the JQL sections, the only difference being they end up showing a number of instead of actual Jira issues
Output variables
In order to make the templates generic, output variables are used. The majority of these output variables are available across all template types, however, there are a few that will be specific to a given template type.
Relevant information is highlighted at the appropriate places below -
List of supported output variables
Users |
Project |
Version |
Sprint |
Date & Time |
Confluence |
releasePageURL (only available in Release page notification and LinkedIn announcement template type) |
Above variables are available in below template types & fields -
Email
Email subject
Email body
PDF
Content
MS Word
Word content
Confluence
Page title
Page content
JSON
Content
HTML
Content
Markdown
Content
JSM announcement
Announcement subject
Announcement message
Linkedin announcement
Announcement subject
Announcement message
URL title and description
MS Word
File name
MS Word content
MS PowerPoint
File name
JQL sections
JQL section
JQL section is the core of ARN release notes templates. Each JQL section represents a group of issues in Jira. Within the JQL section, you can provide additional configurations for each of the results.
We tweak Jira’s JQL a bit in ARN, so that it supports input variables such as [versionId], [versionName], [projectId], [sprintId], [sprintName]. You can always increase the number of input variables by simply appending 1, 2 & so on to their names.
e.g. if you need to create a template that generates release notes from 3 versions, simply use the following input variables in the JQL - [versionId], [versionId1], [versionId2]. In this case, the template can accept 3 different versions as inputs.
Read more about the possibilities of JQL here.
There are a few variants of the JQL section. All of those are explained below. Variant 1 is the most common one.
Stats
Read more here - Stats & charts