Team backlog estimation inside Jira Cloud — user guide, privacy policy and support.
Creating a game takes two steps: the game settings, then the backlog of work items to estimate. Both steps are shown as tabs at the top of the wizard, so you can move back and forth before you create the game.
← Documentation home · Game basics
Before your first game you need content to estimate:
Check project access. The app reads Jira with each participant’s own permissions. If a user cannot browse a project in Jira, its work items will not appear for them in the game either. Review your project permissions before the session so everyone can see what is being estimated.
Open Apps → Planning Poker (or the Planning Poker tab inside a project) and click + New game.
You can also start from an existing game: the ⋯ menu on the Games screen offers Clone game configuration, which prefills step 1 with that game’s settings and takes you straight to step 2 to pick fresh work items. See Manage games.
| Setting | Required | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Name | Yes | The name shown on the Games screen. Prefilled with a suggestion; make it recognisable so the list stays readable |
| Private game | No | Only the facilitator, the estimators and the spectators can see and open this game. Anyone else who follows the link gets a “not found” response |
| Estimation field | Yes | Where the final estimate is written: Story point estimate or Original estimate. See Game basics |
| Card deck | Yes | The cards the estimators vote with. The available decks depend on the estimation field |
| Facilitator | Yes | Runs the game. Defaults to you; type a name to hand it to someone else |
| Estimators | Yes | The people who vote. At least one. If you used a voter list before, a Last time: … line appears with a Use these button that fills it in again |
| Spectators | No | People who watch without voting |
Two behaviours are always on and have no setting:
The Card deck and Estimation field are disabled once an estimate has been saved in the game — a lock icon and an explanation are shown in their place.
Click the Add works to game backlog tab to continue.
This step is a search over your Jira work items. Nothing is searched until you narrow it down: with empty filters and an empty search box the app shows Select a space (or add a filter / type a search) to find work items.
| Control | Notes |
|---|---|
| Work name or key | Free-text search over the summary and the key. Opens one row above the list |
| Spaces | Multi-select over your Jira projects. Preselected with the current project when you opened the app from a project tab |
| Work type | Multi-select over work item types |
| Status | Multi-select over statuses |
| Order by | Rank, Newest, Recently updated, Priority, Key |
| ✕ Clear | Resets every filter |
| JQL | Switches to raw JQL, see below |
The filter dropdowns open one at a time, and the search runs automatically a moment after you stop typing.
Turn on the JQL toggle to write the query yourself. The field is prefilled with:
sprint in openSprints() ORDER BY rank
which returns the work items of your open sprints. Any JQL your Jira accepts works here — the query runs with your own permissions. A syntax error is reported back to you as Jira returned it.
The list is a table:
| Column | Contents |
|---|---|
| Work | Key and summary. Both open the work item in Jira in a new tab |
| Assignee | Current assignee, or Unassigned |
| Estimation field | The current value of the field the game estimates into |
| Priority | Current priority |
| Status | Current status |
Tick the rows you want, or use Select all for the whole result. The count of loaded items is shown above the table. Selected work items stay visible in a separate block at the top, even when a new search no longer returns them, so you always see what the game will contain.
A game holds up to 500 work items.
Click Create game when the backlog is ready.
The ⋯ menu on the Games screen has Clone game configuration, which offers two options:
| Option | Result |
|---|---|
| Only general configuration | Copies the settings into a new game and opens step 2, where you choose the work items |
| Complete game (full duplicate) | Copies the settings and the backlog into a new game |
Votes and saved estimates are never copied — a duplicated game always starts unestimated.