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Manager's Companion — Introduction

 Manager's Companion is a Chrome extension (v1.0.1) that gives engineering managers and team leads a single, daily-driver dashboard built on top of Jira Cloud. It combines a Jira daily report, team availability, an on-call roster, and a live incident monitor into one page.

Its defining trait: it runs fully client-side. There is no backend server — the dashboard talks directly to your Atlassian site from your browser, and all your data (including your API token) stays in your browser's local storage. Clicking the toolbar icon opens the dashboard in a normal browser tab.


What it does

At its core it turns raw Jira data into a shareable daily report for the team you run, and surrounds that report with the operational context a manager needs each morning: who's available, who's on call, what's on fire, and what the ticket numbers aren't telling you.

How it helps managers & leads

AreaWhat it gives you
Jira connectionConnect with base URL + email + API token; token never leaves the browser.
ProjectsSelf-contained workspaces — run several groups, each with its own teams, config, and saved report. Switch between them anytime.
Teams & peopleGroup your reports into teams with optional labels so every view can be sliced by team.
Leaves & holidaysTrack time off and company holidays; the dashboard computes who's genuinely available today/this week and rolls up average availability per team.
Weekly roster & on-callAssign which team is on rotation, track the supporting team, and manage on-call entries.
Daily notesFree-form context for the whole day or per-ticket card notes, folded into the report.
Incident monitorWatch a JQL query for new/open incidents, flag aging ones against an SLA, pin favourites, and get desktop notifications when new incidents appear (with a mute option).
Daily reportOne click assembles availability + roster + notes + incidents + Jira metrics into a summary you can save/copy as a crisp 3× PNG, paste into Outlook, or print to PDF.


Report widgets

Standard breakdowns: KPI cards (open, blockers, critical, in-progress, flagged, unassigned), open-by-type / priority mix, by-team & assignee workload, flagged tickets, ageing, and closure/KPI trend (12-month).

"Honest-signal" widgets — designed to surface the uncomfortable truth a "tickets closed" count hides:

  • 🧹 Backlog hygiene — open tickets missing assignee/fix version/component/due date
  • 🚌 Bus factor — components whose open work sits with exactly one person
  • 🧊 Stalled work — in-progress tickets untouched beyond a threshold
  • 📆 Overdue & due soon
  • ⏱️ Cycle time — p50/p85/p95 (the slow tail averages hide)
  • 🐞 Bug debt — bugs created vs resolved, net change
  • 🧾 Report sources & freshness — the exact JQLs used, counts, and small-sample warnings

Widgets are individually toggleable, section headings are renameable, and small samples (<5 closed tickets) auto-flag so you never over-read thin data.


Other activities & niceties

  • Onboarding — a Getting Started guide opens on first install and is reachable anytime via right-click on the toolbar icon.
  • Backup — Export/Import all your data as a JSON file to move between browsers; the export deliberately excludes your Jira credentials so it's safe to share.
  • Usage stats — tracks how often each feature is used (reports generated, API calls, notifications, etc.), stored locally and included in backups.
  • Privacy-first — everything lives under dr.* keys in local storage; no server, no telemetry leaving your machine.

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/managers-companion/noielgdhlkohbbgghaolikioghpecfag?authuser=0&hl=en

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