Sessions need a laptop or desktop.
If you’re on your phone now, that’s fine. Enrol now and we’ll email you a link so you can pick up when you’re at a computer.
Jira · Foundations
Put a team’s work into Jira and get the answers back out.
What you’ll end up with
A Jira site of your own. The supplied work imported and corrected, a board with a started sprint, three saved filters that answer real questions, and a dashboard built on them.
10½
hours in all — about 6½ guided, 4 on your own
6
sessions. Each designed to be completed in one sitting
Free
No payment and no card required.
Finishing gives you a completion record showing the work you built, and all three levels earn the Alongrail Certificate in Jira. See what you’ll build →
You don’t need prior experience with Jira. There’s no payment and no card required.
From six raw files to a finished Jira space
0195 min
Get a site, and get the work into it
You have a Jira site of your own, a space with a key you chose, and the work from the supplied file inside it — with the columns Jira could not take deliberately out, and the count checked against the file you started from.
0290 min
Read one work item, then read them all at once
You know what a work item actually holds, you have corrected one of them end to end by hand, and you have made the list show the fields you care about so that you can read forty-odd of them at a glance and say what the import got wrong.
03110 min
Make the values true enough to report on
The topic spelt four ways is now one label, the label Jira would not accept is written properly, the work filed under the wrong kind has been corrected in bulk, the requests entered twice are marked and closed, and every piece of work belongs to somebody.
04110 min
Ask the question in the query language
You can write the team lead's questions as queries instead of counting rows — several conditions at once, and the one kind of question a list can never answer, which is what the file never had — and you have kept the most useful of them so that it can be asked again next week.
05105 min
The board, the backlog and one sprint
The space has a backlog, a sprint holding the urgent unfinished work that the filter you saved last week picked out, and a board showing that sprint and nothing else — with three cards moved across it on purpose and the statuses that changed when they landed.
06110 min
Answers the team can open
You can ask a question about a stretch of time, about the words in a summary, and about two kinds of work at once — and the answers are on a dashboard the team opens for themselves, driven by the filters you saved rather than by anything you have to remember to update.
What you need before you start
A laptop or desktop
Sessions need a laptop or desktop. If you’re on your phone now, that’s fine. Enrol now and we’ll email you a link so you can pick up when you’re at a computer. Jira runs in the browser, on Windows or a Mac.
Chrome or Edge
Alongrail runs in the browser too, in its own tab beside Jira.
The course files
Everything you work with is in the download.
What’s free
The whole course: every session, both parts, the files, and your record. Alongrail charges nothing for it. No payment, and no card at any point.
The software
Jira costs nothing for this course.
The data you’ll work with
Every file is invented — the companies, the people and everything in them are made up for the course, and the files are deliberately messy, the way real business data is. Cleaning them is part of the work.
Before you start
The course covers Jira, in your browser.
- A current desktop browser — Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari. Nothing is installed.
- A work or personal email address you can receive mail at, because creating the free Jira site creates an Atlassian account and you sign in to it. No card is asked for and no payment is taken at any point.
- The file wrenfield-work.csv, downloaded from the course page into one folder you can find again — the course calls that folder Jira Foundations, wherever you keep your downloads
- The second company's export, downloaded from the same place into the same folder, for the on-your-own run
- About twenty minutes of quiet for the first session, because creating the site involves a confirmation email
Alongrail teaches the software and gives you a record of what you built, with a link to the work itself. What happens with it afterwards is yours. We don’t place people and we take no part in anyone’s recruitment process.
Enrol free and start now.
Sign in, confirm the one thing the course needs, and session 1 opens. No payment, and no card at any point.
If something goes wrong on the way, press “Something’s wrong” in the panel, or write to hello@alongrail.com — we reply within one working day.
Frequently asked questions
What you build
Stand up a Jira site of your own, put a team's work into it from the file somebody exported, make that work true enough to report on, run it on a board through one sprint, and answer the questions a team lead asks every week by writing them as queries rather than by counting rows by eye.
A working Jira space on your own free site — the supplied work imported and corrected, a board with a started sprint, three saved filters that answer real questions, and a dashboard built on those filters. It is your site, so it is still there after the course.
How a session works
- Open Jira
- Share your screen
- One instruction
- You do it
- It confirms it
- Next
You open Jira and share your screen. Alongrail reads what’s there and gives you one instruction. You do it. It confirms the step landed, then gives you the next one. If something doesn’t match what you see, one button gets you back on track.
Guided
In the Fields list, tick Region. The chart fills in.
One field on the axis, one measure as the value.
then
On your owna different company’s data
Same job, a different company's files. Alongrail stays quiet until you ask.
Guided, then on your own.
The second part of every session uses a different company’s data, with the same kind of mess in different places. Alongrail stays quiet until you ask. It’s the work your record points to.
About 10½ hours in all·about 6½ guided·about 4 on your own
What you earn — the record, the certificate and a sample
Completion record
- Name
- Your name
- Course
- Jira Foundations — put a team's work into Jira and get the answers back out
- Completed
- The date you finish
- Project
- The Jira space you built on your own →
- Skills demonstrated
- Creating a Jira site and a space, and choosing a key that will read well in a message to somebody else · Importing supplied work from a file, mapping the columns Jira can take and deliberately leaving out the ones it cannot · Deciding what an unknown status becomes, and being able to defend the decision · Reading and correcting a work item's fields, one by hand and the rest in bulk · Collapsing a topic spelt several ways onto one label, and finding work filed under the wrong type · Writing the question as a query — several conditions at once, absent values, and a deliberate order · Keeping a query as a filter so that it outlives the afternoon · Running work on a board through one sprint, and reading a card's column as its status · Building a dashboard whose gadgets are driven by filters, and checking a gadget against the filter it came from
What was built
A working Jira space on your own free site — the supplied work imported and corrected, a board with a started sprint, three saved filters that answer real questions, and a dashboard built on those filters. It is your site, so it is still there after the course.
The 6 sessions, and when each was completed on their own
Each session was completed twice: once with step-by-step guidance on one company’s data, then on a second company’s data from a brief, with guidance only when asked. Every check passed on both. Alongrail records the sessions, the checks and the dates; the dashboard itself is the learner’s own, hosted where they chose.
A completion record for Jira Foundations, now. It names the course, the date you finished, the skills you demonstrated, and links the Jira space you built on your own. It’s private until you publish it, and you can unpublish it at any time.
The record is a description of work you did, not a claim about you. Anyone who opens it can see the work for themselves.
The Alongrail Certificate in Jira when all three levels are complete. Foundations is the first of three. Practitioner and Professional are in development, with no dates. See the track →
Your screen stays yours
It looks when you ask. Never otherwise. Images of your screen are not stored. What Alongrail sees →
Nothing you build is public until you publish it. Your record is private until you say so, and you can unpublish it at any time.
What’s Jira?
Jira is the software this course is built in. It runs in your browser.
You won’t learn it by watching hours of tutorials. You’ll learn it by building something real with it.
Who you’re building it for
Wrenfield Tools sells hand tools online. Its web and operations team is five people, and for two years it has tracked its work in a spreadsheet that gets emailed round on Mondays. You have just joined as the person who keeps that work straight. The team lead has exported the spreadsheet to a single file and wants it in Jira by the end of the week, and then wants the same three questions answered every Monday without anybody counting rows — what is urgent and unfinished, what has no date on it at all, and how much of the work falls due this month. Nobody has checked the export. Nobody else on the team has a Jira account yet. What you have is the file and a browser.
Your job is to build the Jira space that answers it.
Do I need to know Jira already?
No. The course assumes you’ve never opened it.
What if I get stuck?
Press the button in the panel and say what you see. Alongrail works out where you actually are and picks the instruction back up.
Why 10½ hours, when other courses are 40?
Because the time is spent doing the work rather than watching it. About 6½ hours is guided; the rest is you building the same thing again on your own.
What does Alongrail see on my screen?
Only the window you choose to share, and only when you ask it to look. Images of your screen are not stored by Alongrail. What Alongrail sees →
Can I use a Mac?
Yes. Jira runs in the browser.
What if I miss a week?
Nothing closes. The dates are there to help you keep moving, not to catch you out.
What’s the “on your own” part?
The second half of every session: the same work on a different company’s data, with Alongrail quiet unless you ask. Both parts are needed for your completion record.
Is it really free?
Yes. No payment, and no card at any point.
Who can see what I build?
Nobody, until you say so. Your record is private until you publish it, and you can unpublish it at any time. What you build stays in your own files or account; where a step publishes something to the software’s own site, the step says so and says who can see it.
Where this course sits
Jira Foundations is Foundations in Jira. The track has three levels; each one you complete earns its own record, and all of them together earn the Alongrail Certificate in Jira. All the courses →