In 2017, Yelp had over 40 Jira administrators. Their environment had hundreds of orphaned workflows, screens, and schemes with very little oversight into who was doing what with their Jira Server instance. Their team turned to Ansible to empower Yelp's engineers to create and archive projects, update categories, project leads, keys, and archive projects without having access to administrative rights and sensitive functions. Learn how they secured and simplified their environment, reduced turnaround time for Jira requests, and made their lives as admins much easier (and how you can, too!)

1. JOSE MARTIN DE VIDALES BIURRUN | APPLICATION ENGINEER | YELP | @JMA
Jira & Ansible
Streamlining Jira Server Administration for the Enterprise
TAYLOR BARRETT-WILSDON | APPLICATION ENGINEER | YELP | @TBARRETT

2. Let your imagination wander!
If there’s an API endpoint, Ansible can automate it.
YOU CAN DO ANYTHING

3. (Without laying anyone off!)
YELP REDUCED JIRA GLOBAL
ADMINS BY 65%
ANSIBLE

4. Workflows, Schemes, Screens, Fields & More
WE REMOVED OVER
400 OBJECTS
ANSIBLE

5. Jira & Ansible
Our Story

6. Who We Are
Jose & Taylor
Jose Martin de Vidales Biurrun
Taylor Barrett-Wilsdon
• First member of the Application Engineering team
• Building & scaling Yelp’s enterprise systems since 2015
• Joined Yelp in 2014
• Atlassian Certified Professional
• Jira Deployments, Upgrades, Migrations & More
jira-summit@yelp.com

7. Who We Are
Our Team
Corporate Engineering
Wide Scope
Corporate Engineering teams own networks, phone systems, client
platform management, cloud services, software development and more.
Application Engineering
Handles ownership of systems and application administration for
Atlassian suite.
Unique Directive
Because the primary owners of Jira are engineers and developers, we
look towards in-house solutions and utilize the API heavily.

8. Who We Are
Yelp
Users have contributed over 150 million reviews like this:

9. Who We Are
Growth
Growth
• 2015: 130 Jira Projects &
500 Users
• At least 5 different teams
had some stake in Jira
• 2017: Application
Engineering takes over Jira
• 2019: 350+ projects & 1,800
Jira Users + 1,500 Service
Desk Agents

10. 40+Jira Global Administrators

11. Jira & Ansible
Problem

12. MEET JON
• Jira Administrator
• Based in Dublin
• Wants to remove a
custom field from his
project

13. MEET JON
• Deletes custom field
• Field is gone from project
• It’s night time in Dublin

14. MEET JON
• Field wasn’t removed
from screen, it was
completely deleted
• Lost thousands of values
from dozens of projects

15. MEET JON
• We don’t even realize it is
gone until automations
start failing
• Only way to recover field
is to restore our entire
instance from a backup

16. TAKEAWAY
We need to be smarter
about this.

17. The Problem
Too many Cooks
We could not effectively train
or manage 40+ admins

18. The Problem
Too many Cooks
We could not effectively train
or manage 40+ admins
Balancing the Load
Needed to balance user
requirements with our own

19. The Problem
Too many Cooks
We could not effectively train
or manage 40+ admins
Balancing the Load
Needed to balance user
requirements with our own
Automation
Could alleviate some of our
administrative burden!

20. Admin
Problems
High Admin Overhead
Lots of small, repetitive tasks coming in
Dominating our workload with simple asks

21. Admin
Problems
High Admin Overhead
Too Many Admins
Lots of small, repetitive tasks coming in
Dominating our workload with simple asks
Admin rights had been granted to too many
users in an effort to spread the workload

22. Admin
Problems
High Admin Overhead
Too Many Admins
Users Not Happy
Lots of small, repetitive tasks coming in
Dominating our workload with simple asks
Admin rights had been granted to too many
users in an effort to spread the workload
Slow request turnaround times and inconsistent
experiences between admins

23. System
Problems
Project Structure Variance
Admins would create projects to their tastes
and habits

24. System
Problems
Project Structure Variance
Old Projects Lie Dormant
Admins would create projects to their tastes
and habits
Archival process was not well known or
documented so old projects piled up

25. System
Problems
Project Structure Variance
Old Projects Lie Dormant
Performance Issues
Admins would create projects to their tastes
and habits
Archival process was not well known or
documented so old projects piled up
Extremely high number of fields, screens,
workflows and more causing system load

26. Security
Problems
Lots of Exposure
More admins means more potential risk of
compromise through credentials

27. Security
Problems
Lots of Exposure
Insufficient Logging
More admins means more potential risk of
compromise through credentials
We had little to inform us about potentially
dangerous actions occurring

28. Security
Problems
Lots of Exposure
Insufficient Logging
Results Not Intended
More admins means more potential risk of
compromise through credentials
We had little to inform us about potentially
dangerous actions occurring
Admins were accidentally deleting fields, issues,
even projects without the rest knowing

29. Jira & Ansible
Solution

30. Atlassian to the Rescue!
Jira 7.3 introduced the ability for project
admins to manage workflows, statuses
and transitions for their project!

31. Automated Solutions
Jira API
The Project from Template
API endpoint was key

32. Automated Solutions
Jira API
The Project from Template
API endpoint was key
Removing Humans
Automated remaining admin
tasks via Ansible

33. Automated Solutions
Jira API
The Project from Template
API endpoint was key
Removing Humans
Automated remaining admin
tasks via Ansible
Scripted Maintenance
Created job to automatically
set project admins and leads

34. Jira & Ansible
Technology

35. Yelp Lab
Ansible met our
needs - open source
& well documented
WE CAN
BUILD IT

36. Meet Julia
PROJECT CREATION

37. MEET JULIA
Julia wants a new Jira project:
• Summit
• Only accessible to
Engineering teams
• Kanban board configuration

38. Project
Creation
Clone Git repository
Clone the Git repository that contains all Yelp
Jira projects

39. Project
Creation
Use self-service script
Custom Python script that asks some basic
questions and generates a YAML file

40. Project
Creation
Push YAML file
That contains all Jira project configuration

41. YAML FILE
New Project
---
SUMMIT:
board_configuration: kanban
key: SUMMIT
lead: Julia
name: Summit Project
description: My super cool project

42. Validate
YAML
Jenkins + Ansible – Project Creation

43. YAML FILE
---
SUMMIT:
board_configuration: kanban
key: SUMMIT
lead: Julia
name: Summit Project
description:

44. Validate
YAML
Stages
Jenkins + Ansible – Project Creation

45. Validate
YAML
Stages Deploy
Jenkins + Ansible – Project Creation

46. YAML FILE
Project created
---
SUMMIT:
board_configuration: kanban
key: SUMMIT
lead: Julia
name: Summit Project
description: My super cool project
project_created: True

47. EMAIL
NOTIFICATION
Simple email
notification
Project admin
best practices

48. Success!

49. Done!
Project archival
Extremely simple!
Julia is ready to archive her project
(And it’s even easier!)

50. YAML FILE
Just need to add a
new tag ---
SUMMIT:
board_configuration: kanban
key: SUMMIT
lead: Julia
name: Summit Project
description: My super cool project
archive: True

51. Project
Archival
No open tickets
Ansible will verify that there are no open tickets.

52. Project
Archival
Project name, category, and
schemes updated
Name, category, and schemes updated to
clearly mark as archived.

53. Project
Archival
Email Notification
An email notification will get sent to the
requestor

54. Ansible
Git
Review Board
Jenkins
Pre-commit
Open Source
Tools

55. Open Source
Tools
Free Tools
Resources

56. Tools
• Configuration management
• Provisioning
• Deployment
• Service orchestration
A complex infrastructure isn’t needed
Easy to understand
Ansible
SIMPLE YAML FILES
AGENTLESS
POWERFUL & SIMPLE AUTOMATION ENGINE

57. Tools
We can easily identify changes:
• Who
• What
• When
• Where
Git is designed specifically to maintain the integrity of source code
Quickly and Safely revert changes if needed
Git
SEAMLESS ROLLBACKS
SECURITY
POWERFUL REVISION HISTORY

58. Tools
• Widely used continuous integration platform at Yelp
• Many other CI options work, too!
• Atlassian Bamboo Provides support for Ansible Deployment
Helps us validate the project configuration that our Yelp engineers push
to the repository
Jenkins
LEVERAGING PIPELINES
CI PLATFORM

59. Tools
We can leverage Jenkins pipelines by creating individual steps to validate
code, test it, and deploy it
There are a lot of already implemented tests to validate your code
Pre-commit
TONS OF PRE-BUILT HOOKS
VALIDATE YAML FILES

60. Projects Endpoint
Used to set project parameters and
retrieve existing project data
Jira’s REST API

61. Projects Endpoint
Used to set project parameters and
retrieve existing project data
Project-templates Endpoint
Used to create perfectly
standardized projects
Jira’s REST API

62. Security
Rich Logging
Using Git to know who, what,
when & where

63. Security
Rich Logging
Using Git to know who, what,
when & where
Splunk
Alerts and dashboards

64. Security
Rich Logging
Using Git to know who, what,
when & where
Splunk
Alerts and dashboards
Single Account
Minimizing the risk of
exposure

65. Jira & Ansible
Demo

66. Demo Video
Goes here

67. Jira & Ansible
Conclusion

68. Benefit & Value
Performance
Tighter standards and fewer
objects = better performance!

69. Benefit & Value
Performance
Tighter standards and fewer
objects = better performance!
Less Administrators
Better security, quick
turnarounds & happy users!

70. Benefit & Value
Performance
Tighter standards and fewer
objects = better performance!
Less Administrators
Better security, quick
turnarounds & happy users!
Ownership
Project creators feel sense of
ownership & empowerment

71. 65%Reduction of Jira Administrators

72. Before
Users request a project by creating a
ticket, ready in 3-5 days and come to our
admins for any changes needed.

73. Before
Users request a project by creating a
ticket, ready in 3-5 days and come to our
admins for any changes needed.
After
Projects created instantly, user has
admin rights and documentation to
make their own changes in real time!

74. 400+Unnecessary objects removed in cleanup after standardization!

75. 400+100+ Screens & Screen Schemes
150+ Workflows
30 Statuses & Priorities
30 Issue Type Schemes
35 Custom Fields

76. Beauty In
Advertising
Lessons Learned

77. Notifications Are Key

78. Document
Everything
Lessons Learned

80. Trust Your
Users
Lessons Learned

81. You have the
power!
By leveraging Jira’s API and
open source tools,
you can automate manual
tasks and let users self-
serve safely!

82. jira-summit@yelp.com

83. Thank you!