Creating, testing, and editing extensions for Zoho Sprints using Sigma Cloud Editor

Hello all!

We're delighted to announce the beginning of a new series called Building extensions for Zoho Sprints. Our primary goal for this series is to educate developers on the process of creating extensions for Zoho Sprints and guide them through the features and capabilities in the developer platform that will help them build based on their specific requirements.

Before we get started, here's a quick overview of Zoho Sprints.

An overview of Zoho Sprints

In general, a sprint is a short predefined time span set out to plan, work on, and complete a list of tasks to achieve a goal.

Zoho Sprints is agile project management software that allows teams to plan, track, and manage their projects seamlessly throughout the software development lifecycle.

Zoho Sprints helps you handle project management effortlessly by following a hierarchical structure as depicted below.

Let's take the key components involved in a business to understand this hierarchy better.

While running a large scale business, you may be responsible for managing multiple firms across various industries, such as a strategy consulting firm, a software firm, and a recruitment firm.

➤ These firms can be managed individually within Zoho Sprints by creating a separate workspace or team for each.

You might need to manage operations in your firm that each require a set of processes and tasks.

➤ These can be handled through projects in Zoho Sprints. A project is a basic entity that includes tasks, processes, and goals for a particular venture. There can be multiple projects in your workspace.

Within each project, you might need to handle several tasks which are basic units of work that need to be identified, assigned, tracked, and completed.

➤ These units of work can be created as work items inside the project.
➤ Work items can be categorized as a story, bug, or task and be assigned a priority of high, medium, low, or none.

A project contains: a project backlog, a sprint backlog, and a board.

➤ The project backlog is a consolidated list of all the work items needed to complete the project.
➤ The sprint backlog can hold multiple planned sprints. Work items can be created and stored in the project backlog and then moved to a certain sprint in the sprint backlog during the sprint's planning.
➤ When you're ready to start working on the items for a sprint, you can begin the sprint and then track its progress on the board. The board helps you visualize the progress of a sprint. You can easily drag and drop work items on the board through phases as they're completed.

For further details on Zoho Sprints, check out the Zoho Sprints quickstart guide.

Now that we have a basic understanding of the key terms involved in Zoho Sprints, let's create an extension.

Creating an extension using Sigma Cloud Editor

Go to Sigma and access your workspace. If you’re accessing Sigma for the first time, you'll be prompted to provide a name for your workspace. Name it and click Create Workspace.

Once you enter your workspace in Sigma, you will be taken to the Extensions section.

Click the New Extension button to start creating and building an extension.

Enter a name and description for the extension. Choose the service Zoho Sprints.

You can create an extension for Zoho Sprints using the Sigma Cloud Editor.

To build an extension using the Sigma Cloud Editor, toggle Upload Existing File to No, agree to the terms and conditions, and click Create.

You'll be taken to your extension's cloud editor environment, where you can begin developing your extension. The cloud editor generates a folder and file structure by default, which includes an app folder and the plugin-manifest.json file required for a sample extension.

The app folder has a defined structure. This folder allows you to manage the resources for your extension.

The plugin-manifest.json file is essential and contains the components required to configure an extension. Any component required for the extension must be configured in this file as a key-value pair. The plugin-mainfest.json file holds a sample widget key by default with the following details:

➤ name: The name of the widget
➤ location: The location in which the widget needs to be rendered. This default widget's location is in the work item's right navigation bar. You can see the supported widget locations here.
➤ url: The URL path of the HTML file in the folder structure which renders the widget's user interface
Note: We will be exploring the other important keys available as part of the plugin-manifest.json file in our upcoming posts.

Now that we've seen how to create an extension using the cloud editor, let's test it.

Testing an extension using the cloud editor

In the last section, we saw that the extension's plugin-manifest.json file is by default configured with a sample widget in the work item's right navigation bar. Now, let's test the extension and see if the configured widget is rendered and loaded properly.

To test the extension in a test environment before publishing and installing it, click Run.

You'll be taken to the test environment of your Zoho Sprints portal, where you'll land on the extension installation/configuration page.

Under General, specify the projects in your Zoho Sprints portal where the extension should be installed and the profiles that can use it.

After you've chosen your general settings, click Install Now.

Note: Please remember that as long as the Run option is active, this installation in the test environment will install the extension on your Zoho Sprints production account portal as well. Once Run is terminated, the extension will be automatically uninstalled from your production account portal.

The extension has been successfully installed in the test environment. Click Cancel or use the Back icon to go to the configuration page.

Click Configure to change any of your extension's settings or preferences. Next, click the Close icon.

To test the widget's functionality, go to a project and select a work item from it.

The widget is visible in the right navigation bar of the work item, with the name Sprints Extension and the logo from the plugin-manifest.json file.

Click on the Sprints Extension icon. The widget will load and render successfully.

Once the extension functionality has been successfully tested in the test environment, you can terminate it by selecting the Stop option in the cloud editor.

You can rerun and test anytime by simply clicking the Run option again.

Key pointers while testing the extension

➤ If you make any modifications to the extension in the cloud editor, you can save them using the Save All option and then refresh the test environment to see the changes reflected in it.
➤ If you make any modifications to your extension's plugin-manifest.json file, you must stop running the test environment using Stop and then restart it using Run in order for the changes to be reflected.

Editing an extension in the cloud editor

To make changes to your extension's code, navigate to the Extensions section on the left panel of your Sigma workspace.

Hover over the extension that you want to modify. Click on the Edit Builder icon.

You'll be taken to the cloud editor for that extension, where you can make your changes.

Alternatively, you can click the Extension Details icon.

Then click Edit Extension.

Congrats! You can now create an extension and test it using Sigma Cloud Editor. We hope you found this information useful. Stay tuned for more updates!