Managing apps
About apps
For all of the following procedures, you must be logged in as a user with the Jira system administrator global permissions.
An app is an installable component that supplements or enhances the functionality of Jira in some way. For example, the Jira Calendar Plugin is an app that shows the due dates for issues and versions in calendar format. Other apps are available for connecting Jira to Bamboo, developing for Jira, and accessing Atlassian support from Jira.
Jira comes with many pre-installed apps (called system apps). You can install more apps, either by acquiring an app from the Atlassian Marketplace, or by uploading an app from your file system. This means that you can install apps that you have developed yourself. For information about developing your own apps for Jira, see the Jira Developer documentation.
To enable various Jira Gadgets, see Configuring the default dashboard.
On this page:
About the Universal Plugin Manager
The Universal Plugin Manager (UPM) is itself an app that you use to administer apps from the Jira Administration console. UPM works across Atlassian applications, providing a consistent interface for administering apps in Jira, Confluence, Crucible, Fisheye, Bitbucket Server, or Bamboo.
UPM comes pre-installed in recent versions of all Atlassian applications, so you do not normally need to install it yourself. However, like other apps, the UPM software is subject to regular software updates. Before administering apps in Jira, therefore, you should verify your version of the UPM, and update it if needed.
You can update UPM or any app from the UPM's own app administration pages. In addition to updating UPM, you can perform these tasks from the administration pages:
- Install or remove apps
- Configure app settings
- Discover and install new apps from the Atlassian Marketplace
- Enable or disable apps and their component modules, including "safe mode"
If the app request feature is enabled in your Atlassian application, non-administrative users can also discover apps in the Atlassian Marketplace. Instead of installing the apps, however, these users have the option of requesting the apps from you, the administrator of the Atlassian application.
For more information on administering the app request feature or performing other common app administration tasks, see the Universal Plugin Manager documentation.
Reindexing Jira
Changes to the apps in your instance affect Jira search index. After you make changes to apps, you'll get the following message in the Administration view:
We recommend that you perform a re-index, as configuration changes were made to 'SECTION' by USER at TIME. If you have other changes to make, complete them first so that you don't perform multiple re-indexes
The message means that configuration changes have been made to Jira but haven't yet been reflected in the search index. Until Jira search index has been rebuilt, some search queries from Jira might return incorrect results.
To avoid any discrepancies, you should rebuild Jira search index.
If you want to know after which actions with apps you need to re-index Jira, check Reindexing in Jira Server and Data Center after configuring an instance for tips.
Learn more about other major configuration changes when Jira reindex is required