Team backlog estimation inside Jira Cloud — user guide, privacy policy and support.
A game is played in rounds. Each round covers one work item and ends when the facilitator saves a final estimate for it.
← Documentation home · Create a game
There are two ways in:
The app has no built-in chat, audio or video. Agree on a call or a channel before you start — the discussion between the reveal and the final estimate is where planning poker does its work.
Which game you can open depends on its Private setting. A public game can be opened by anyone with access to the app; a private game only by its facilitator, estimators and spectators. Everybody else gets Game not found or deleted.
The room has two parts:
Work item keys and summaries are links — they open the work item in Jira in a new tab, so the game stays open in the tab you are in.
The room refreshes itself every few seconds. Polling stops while the browser tab is in the background and resumes as soon as you come back to it; the fields taken live from Jira (assignee, priority, status, current estimate) refresh about once a minute.
Pick a card. Your card is highlighted for you but stays hidden from everybody else until the reveal.
Add a note (optional, up to 200 characters) in the field under the deck to explain your vote — for example “assumes the API is already there”. Notes are hidden exactly like the cards and appear for everyone under Notes after the reveal.
Voting status lists everyone expected to vote and their state — voted or waiting — with a summary line above it. When the last person has voted, the facilitator sees a green banner saying the results can be revealed, and the other participants see a quieter line saying the team is waiting for the facilitator.
Spectators do not see the deck. If you expected to vote and cannot, check the estimator list of the game — see FAQ.
The facilitator can run a round timer of 30s, 60s or 2 min, and stop it early with Stop. The remaining time is shown to everyone. When the timer runs out the votes are revealed automatically, so treat it as a soft deadline for the round rather than a hard cut-off.
💡 Suggest estimate is a shortcut for the facilitator. It searches your own Jira site for work items whose summary shares keywords with the current one and that already have a story point value, takes the median of what it finds and snaps it to the nearest card in the game’s deck. The result reads Looks like 5 — based on 12 similar work items; hovering it shows the work items behind the number.
It is a JQL search inside your own Jira, run with your permissions. No AI or external service is involved, and nothing leaves Atlassian. If your site has no Story Points field, or nothing similar is estimated yet, the app says so and the round continues as normal.
The facilitator clicks Reveal votes. Every card is turned over at once, together with the notes.
The results block shows:
| Element | When it appears | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Most Votes | From 3 votes onwards, when a single card leads | The most frequent estimate, shown large |
| “The votes are split: 5 and 13 (2 votes each). Discuss and revote.” | Two or more cards tie for the lead | There is no single answer yet — discuss and run another round |
| Voted N/M | Always | How many of the game’s estimators have cast a card |
| Distribution | Always | One row per card, 3x 5, most frequent first; ties keep the deck order |
| Notes | When someone left a note | Author and note text |
∞ and ☕ take part in all of this like any other card.
With one or two votes the Most Votes block is hidden — a single vote is not a majority — while the count, the distribution and the notes are still shown.
Re-vote clears the votes for the current work item and starts a fresh round with hidden cards. Use it after a discussion, or whenever the votes were split.
An estimator can also change their card after the reveal; the results update live for everyone.
After the reveal the facilitator gets a Final estimate selector, prefilled with the leading card, and a save button. The button is labelled:
| Label | When |
|---|---|
| Save estimate | The default label |
| Save & next | Other work items are still unestimated — saving opens the next one automatically |
| Save & finish | This is the last unestimated work item — a confirmation dialog appears, and saving closes the game |
What happens on save:
If Jira refuses the write, the app shows the reason instead of a silent success. The usual cause is a field that is not on the work item’s screen — see Jira configuration.
If the final estimate is ∞ or ☕, nothing is written to Jira: the room says kept in game only (non-numeric card — nothing written to Jira), and the value is still kept in the game and its report.
The facilitator can change a game while it is being played, from Edit game in the room or from the ⋯ menu on the Games screen. It opens the same wizard as creation, with two tabs — Edit game for the settings and Edit backlog for the work items — and one Save for both.
Two rules protect what is already done:
A game finishes when the facilitator saves the estimate for the last unestimated work item and confirms Save & finish.
A finished game opens on a Game finished screen listing every work item with its final estimate. From there:
A finished game is read-only. Voting, revealing, re-voting, the timer, saving estimates and every kind of editing are rejected. Its report and CSV export stay available.