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Professional services · Forge

Leathwaite: an Excel process replaced by two Forge apps, five hours a week saved

Leathwaite kept one step of its Jira process in Excel, because Jira had no field type that could hold it. I built two Forge apps: a user field with restrictions the native picker lacks, and the same function exposed to Jira automation. The spreadsheet is gone and the team saves 5 hours a week.

Result5 hsaved per week · Excel replaced
ContextProfessional services
ServiceForge apps →

Key takeaways

  • The trigger for custom code was a field type Jira does not have, not a wish for something bespoke.
  • Building the field was half the job. Making it usable in automation is what removed the manual step.
  • The measured result is 5 hours a week, every week, on a process that used to live in Excel.

01Where the spreadsheet came from

Spreadsheets appear next to Jira when Jira cannot express a rule. Here the rule was about people: who may be chosen in a field depends on restrictions the standard user picker has no setting for. The team kept the allowed choices in Excel and copied the outcome into tickets by hand.

Nothing was wrong with the people or the workflow. The tool had a hole, and a file filled it.

02Two Forge apps, one feeding automation

- Allowed users tracked in an Excel file
- Result copied into the Jira ticket by hand
- Automation could not read or set the value
+ A restricted user field, built as a Forge custom field type
+ The value is picked on the ticket, inside the rule
+ Jira automation reads and sets the field through a second Forge app

The first app adds the field type. The second makes that function available to Jira automation, so a rule can act on the field the way it acts on any native one. Both run on Forge, inside Leathwaite’s own Atlassian site.

03Five hours a week, back

5 hours a week

saved by replacing the Excel process with a field and automation inside Jira.

Leathwaite · professional services

04Decisions that stayed with people

The apps enforce a restriction. They do not decide what the restriction should be. Who belongs in the allowed set, and which automation rules may use the field, are settings Leathwaite’s own administrators hold.

05Handover and ownership at Leathwaite

A Forge app can be handed over with its source and installed from a developer site the client controls, or it can stay with me and be maintained on a continuing basis. Which of the two applies is agreed per engagement, and it was agreed here before the first line was written.

Questions

Could a Marketplace app have done this?
That is the first thing I check on any Forge request, and I say so when one fits. Here the need was a field type with this specific restriction plus automation support, and building it was the shorter road. The reasoning is on the buy or build page.
Is this an AI project?
No. It is tooling work, and I list it because it shows the same habit: find where the process leaves the system, then close that gap inside the system.

If a spreadsheet sits next to your Jira because one field or one rule is missing, a call will tell you whether configuration, an app or a small build closes it.

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Written by Ben Friedman, fractional forward-deployed AI engineer · Published