In February, we made an exciting announcement regarding our support for Jira Data Center as an addition to our Cloud offering, providing a valuable solution for companies with an on-premises preference. This support empowers organizations to automate their configuration change management process efficiently.

In our ongoing dialogue with customers, we discovered that many of them have highly customized Jira instances, that often incorporate extensive ScriptRunner scripts, which play a vital role in automating complex organizational workflows.

I am excited to share that we have now added ScriptRunner as a supported add-on. Jira administrators can include their ScriptRunner scripts in the configuration they manage with Salto, and automate another part of their customization change management process. This integration marks a significant step forward in empowering Jira administrators and facilitating smoother, more efficient configuration management processes.

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What does it mean?

In essence, this means that your ScriptRunner Groovy scripts in workflows, behaviour and more can now be managed in Salto just like any other configuration element. This allows for seamless deployment across various instances, such as development, User Acceptance Testing (UAT), sandbox, and production. Moreover, it lets you understand the potential impact on other configuration elements, incorporate them into a version control system, generate pull requests, and effectively manage a comprehensive development cycle.

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ScriptRunner Scripts: Code That Deserves More

Let's reimagine our approach to ScriptRunner scripts. These scripts, the unseen powerhouse behind your Jira customizations, have long been misstreated. It's time to acknowledge them as what they truly are — code — and to work with them accordingly through a full development cycle. The benefits of managing ScriptRunner scripts as code throughout the entire development cycle are manifold, driving efficiency and reliability in our customization processes.

Automated deployment of scripts between instances - No more replicating changes by hand in production. Jira teams can now copy changes made in dev to UAT and then to production in an automated way, avoiding the slow and error-prone process of manually applying them to production.

Version control -  Salto is the only platform that allows admins to integrate version control system in their script management process. Admins can push scripts to Git, collaborate effectively through pull requests, and roll back to previous versions if needed. This isn't about transforming scripts into code; it's about recognizing that they've been code all along, and ensuring they're treated as such.

Complete impact analysis - Waive away the guesswork. With Salto, you can understand where scripts are being used and how changing them will impact other elements in their instance. This allows admins to predict the impact of changes, plan better, and avoid production issues

Why you should treat your ScriptRunner scripts just like any other code?

Applying DevOps principles to Jira ScriptRunner scripts fosters a culture of collaboration, automation and efficiency.

Enhanced Teamwork - Applying DevOps approaches to ScriptRunner script management enables team members to communicate seamlessly, stay abreast of customization updates, review their colleagues' changes, and engage in productive discussions. This not only boosts transparency but also encourages real-time teamwork, leading to overall efficiency

Less errors and system downtime - Alongside automating some of the manual, error-prone tasks of moving scripts between instances, using Salto can improve human errors in other ways;

• Keeping your instances in sync - you can always back-promote changes to lower environments so your development and testing are done in an environment that is as close as possible to the production instance. This reduces the chances of conflicts caused by misaligned instances.
• Get alerts on potential merge errors or missing dependencies - with Salto you can see whether your deployment is likely to encounter an error or if any required element is missing. You can also drill down into things that won’t be deployed and understand what you can do to fix it.
• Troubleshoot and rollback - In case of production issues, you can swiftly spot the differences by comparing your production instance with UAT. Furthermore, you can revert to a prior configuration version for a rapid recovery, maintaining user satisfaction.

Faster time-to-market - Embracing those methods create a more efficient process, which means the team needs to spend less time on manual tasks and on figuring out what broke their testing/production instance, and deliver customization changes faster to the business units.

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Specific Use cases

Some of the more specific use cases you can now use Salto for -

• Deploy scripts from sandbox to production: Salto provides a simple and intuitive interface that enables you to deploy your ScriptRunner scripts from sandbox to production seamlessly. Say goodbye to manual copy-pasting of scripts and hello to efficient and error-free deployments.
• Import your ScriptRunner production scripts to your sandbox: With Salto, you can easily import your ScriptRunner production scripts to your sandbox, UAT and dev instances. This allows you to maintain an up-to-date pipeline and test future changes with confidence before deploying them to production.
• Deploy your changes to production all at once and say goodbye to overtime or weekend obligations: The modifications you make may go beyond the actual script. They might rely on a blend of code tweaks and configuration adjustments. By releasing all these changes with a single automated action, you can avoid any problems that might arise in the a gradual production rollout -  rule out the need to worry over the order of deployment, avoid disrupting your end users flows and say goodbye to weekend or night shifts.
• Understand why your scripts are not working in production: With Salto, you can easily compare the configurations of your ScriptRunner scripts across different environments and identify differences that may be causing issues. This helps you troubleshoot issues faster and get your scripts back up and running in no time.
• Keep your scripts in version control: Salto integrates with version control systems like Git, allowing you to manage your ScriptRunner scripts just like you would manage any other code. This means you can track changes, collaborate with your team, and roll back changes if needed.

Your ScriptRunner scripts deserve to be treated like code because it opens up a world of possibilities for collaboration, efficiency, and reliability. By treating them as integral parts of the development cycle, you set the stage for seamless teamwork, reduced errors, faster time-to-market, and simplified management. So, why wait?