User guide

Greenlight adds release readiness and sign-off gates to Jira. Every release gets a board of gates — QA, Security, Docs, Legal, whatever your process needs — each with an owner, checklist items, evidence links, and live-linked Jira issues. A release is ready when every required gate is approved, and every approval, rejection, revocation, and override is kept in a permanent audit trail.

Greenlight runs entirely on Atlassian's Forge platform: no data ever leaves your Atlassian site.

Concepts

• Release — the thing you're shipping: a software version, a feature rollout, or a marketing launch. Lives in one Jira project, optionally linked to a Jira fixVersion. Its status (Planning → In progress → Ready) is computed from its gates, never hand-set; Released and Cancelled are explicit actions.
• Gate — one team's approval: a named checkpoint (e.g. "QA sign-off") with an owner who is accountable for approving it. Gates can be required (they block readiness) or optional.
• Item — the evidence inside a gate: checklist entries, evidence links (test runs, scan reports), and linked Jira issues whose status syncs live. Items drive the gate's progress automatically; when the last item completes, the owner is nudged that the gate is ready to sign off.
• Sign-off — the human decision. Approve (with an optional note) or reject (a note is required). Sign-offs are never applied — or revoked — automatically by the app.

Getting started

1. Install Greenlight from the Atlassian Marketplace (Jira Cloud).
2. Open any Jira project → Apps → Greenlight in the project sidebar.
3. Click Create release and pick a starter template — Software Version, Feature Rollout, or Marketing Launch — or start empty. Templates seed the usual gates with sensible checklists.
4. Assign each gate an owner, add items, link the Jira issues that must land.
5. Watch readiness compute itself; sign off gates as teams finish.

Want to see it working before wiring up your own process? On an empty project, click Explore a sample release — it seeds one clearly-marked sample release with gates, items, sign-offs, and notes so every screen shows something real. Remove it any time with one click. It never touches your Jira issues.

The release page

• Gates tab — the gate board. A rail down the side lists every gate with its status, owner and item progress, so you can see the whole release at a glance; select one and it opens beside the rail, where you check items, link issues, attach evidence, discuss in the gate's comment thread (type @ to mention someone), and sign off. The board opens on the gate that most needs attention, and a gate you pick yourself stays picked if you reload. Release managers reorder gates and add new ones from the rail itself. On narrow windows and in the issue panel, the gates stack instead. Colors: green = approved, amber = at risk or awaiting sign-off, red = rejected, gray = not started.
• "Waiting on" — at the top of every release, a plain-language line naming who the release is waiting on, worst first, or telling you it's ready.
• Notes tab — one release-notes document per release: write it, generate a deterministic draft from completed work, or save a draft from the Rovo agent.
• Report tab — the compliance snapshot: who approved what, when, with what note, plus every override and the evidence frozen at each sign-off (approvals snapshot the gate's checklist and evidence links into the audit event, so the record stands even if a linked page later changes). Copy it as markdown, download the .md, or print it — all in your browser, nothing leaves your site.
• Activity tab — the full append-only audit log.
• ⋯ menu — release-level actions: mark released, save as template, archive/unarchive, delete.

When things drift

Greenlight surfaces drift instead of hiding (or "fixing") it:

• A linked issue reopens after its gate was approved → the approval stands (sign-off is a human act), but the drift is audit-logged, flagged on the gate, and shown in the attention strip until a human revokes or confirms.
• A Jira version is released while required gates are red → warning banner and an audit event per unapproved gate.
• A gate is unfinished close to the target date → flagged at-risk on the hub and in the daily sweep.
• Releasing over unapproved gates requires a typed confirmation and a note, recorded permanently as an override.

Keeping track across releases and projects

• My gates — a personal, worst-first queue (overdue → rejected → regressed → at risk → ready to sign) of every gate you own or must approve, across every project you can see. Available as a tab on the global overview and as a Jira dashboard gadget ("Greenlight — My gates").
• Timeline — the cross-project overview's Timeline view draws one bar per release, creation → target date, colored by status, with a today line; click through to any release.
• Weekly digest — each week the hub shows which releases need attention, why, and the outstanding gates grouped by owner. Dismiss it and it stays gone until Monday. The Rovo agent delivers the same briefing on request.
• Bulk operations — release managers can select several releases on the hub to archive/unarchive them or shift their target dates by a number of days at once.

Dashboard gadgets

Add any of these from a Jira dashboard's gadget directory. They respect project permissions — you only ever see projects you can browse — and the ones marked configurable are set up via the gadget's ⋯ → Edit menu:

• My gates — your personal sign-off queue (above).
• Release countdown (configurable: project + release) — one release on the wall: big days-to-target number, readiness bar, and the gates still blocking with their owners.

Templates & governance

• Templates are versioned: every edit bumps the version, and each release records which template and version seeded it ("seeded from X v2" on the release header).

Jira Automation

Greenlight ships a rule action for Jira Automation: Create Greenlight release — pick a template and name the release (smart values supported), and your rule seeds the full gate board. It runs as the rule actor under the same permission rules as the UI. Pair it with Jira-native triggers (sprint completed, version created, issue transitioned) to start readiness tracking automatically.

Archiving vs deleting

• Archive (⋯ menu) hides a release from the hub, the cross-project overview, and attention feeds — but keeps it viewable (hub → Show archived) and keeps its history in analytics. Fully reversible.
• Delete permanently removes the release and its whole audit history after a typed confirmation. Prefer archive.

Permissions

Action	Who
View releases, check items, add evidence, comment on gates	Anyone who can see the project
Sign off a gate	The gate's owner (a release manager may override — flagged in the audit log)
Create/edit/archive/delete releases and gates, save notes, mark released, bulk operations	Release managers (project admins)
Manage global templates	Jira admins

Everything runs as the user, so Jira's own permission model always applies — Greenlight never shows anyone a project they can't browse.

The Rovo agent (optional)

If Rovo is enabled on your site, the Greenlight agent answers questions in chat, grounded in live data: "What's blocking release 2.4?", "What needs attention this week?", "Draft release notes for 2.4". It can also create releases from templates and record sign-offs — write actions always ask for your confirmation first, follow the same permission rules as the UI, and are audit-logged as done via Rovo. Greenlight is fully functional without Rovo.

Insights

The hub's Insights view computes, from your own audit trail: gate cycle time (release created → gate approved), sign-off lead time (last item done → approved), approval/rejection counts, and which teams most often approve last. No AI involved — it's arithmetic over your gate events.

FAQ

Where is my data stored? In Forge SQL — Atlassian-hosted storage inside the Forge platform, in your site's region. Greenlight is egress-free: no external servers, no third-party services, no analytics beacons — even Greenlight's own usage counts stay in your site's Forge SQL. It is eligible for Atlassian's Runs on Atlassian program.

What does Greenlight read from Jira? Only what you link: issue key/summary/status for linked issues, project versions, and display names/avatars for people pickers. Reads happen as the requesting user.

Does Greenlight ever change my Jira issues or workflows? No. It never transitions issues, never edits fields, never touches workflows.

Can an approval be revoked automatically? No. If linked work regresses after approval, Greenlight flags it loudly and logs it — revoking is always a human call.

What happens when I uninstall? App storage is removed per Atlassian's Forge platform policy. You can also delete releases in-app beforehand.

Does it work without Rovo? Yes, completely. The agent is a convenience layer over the same data.

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Support — sanyasha.com/greenlight/support

Privacy policy — sanyasha.com/greenlight/privacy