Install
- In Jira, open Apps → Explore more apps, search for Bastion Helix, and choose Try it free. You need to be a site administrator.
- Approve the permissions (listed below). Jira installs the app; there is nothing to host and no account to create.
- The app starts copying your issues and worklogs into its own Forge storage straight away. On a large site the first copy takes a while; charts fill in as it goes.
Sites with 10 users or fewer use the app free. Larger sites get a 30-day trial, then pay through their Atlassian bill.
What the app can access
| Permission | What it's used for |
|---|---|
| Read Jira work | Issues, status history and worklogs for charts, timesheets, budgets and rules. |
| Read Jira users | People's names, and matching an email sender to a Jira user. |
| Write Jira work | Worklogs you log through the app; issues, comments and attachments your email channels create; and what your own automation rules do. Nothing in the app's code deletes an issue. |
| App storage | The app's copy of your issues and worklogs, saved reports, budgets, rates, diagrams, rules, mail logs and AI usage — all in Forge storage inside Atlassian. |
Every change the app makes in Jira is recorded as Bastion Helix. The app sends nothing to any server outside Atlassian. See Privacy.
Where to find it in Jira
- Apps → Bastion Helix — the full app: charts, timesheets, budgets and Workforce Intelligence.
- A project's sidebar → Bastion Helix — the same tools for that project, plus its diagrams, automation rules and email channels.
- Dashboards → Add gadget → Bastion Helix Chart — any saved chart on a Jira dashboard.
- An issue → Who built this — the people, commits, AI tools and AI cost behind the issue (Workforce Intelligence viewers only).
- Settings → Apps → Bastion Helix settings — administrator settings: sync status, report fields, time settings and Tempo import, site-wide automation and email, and Workforce Intelligence setup.
Who sees what
- Issues are limited to the projects the viewer can browse. Projects that use issue security levels are answered by a live query run as that viewer.
- Hours: people see their own; project admins see hours in their projects; approvers see the people they approve; Jira admins see everyone's.
- Rates and per-person cost are set by Jira admins and shown only to budget owners allowed to see those people's hours.
- Automation rules and email channels are managed by project admins for their own projects, and by Jira admins site-wide.
- Workforce Intelligence is visible to Jira admins and the people they name.
Charts & dashboards
Open Apps → Bastion Helix. Start from a preset (open by priority, throughput trend, cycle time by type, workload by person) or build your own: choose what to group and split by, the measure, a calculation and a chart type. Click any bar, slice or cell to see its issues. Save a chart to reuse or share it, export CSV or PNG, or add it to a dashboard as a gadget.
Issues refresh from Jira every hour and worklogs every five minutes. See Cycle time, lead time and throughput.
Time tracking
Open the timesheet. Type a duration into any day — 2h, 1.5, 90m and 1h30 all work — or start the timer on an issue. Mark work billable and choose an account and category. Submit the week when it's done; approvers approve or reject it.
Administrators set working schedules, holidays, accounts and locked periods in Bastion Helix settings, and can import Tempo history there. See Moving from Tempo Timesheets.
Budgets & cost tracking
A Jira admin first sets hourly rates: a site default, then per project and per person, each from a date. Then create a budget for a project with dates, lines and a currency. Cost comes from logged hours at the rate on the day; percent complete comes from a figure you set, resolved story points, or resolved issues. See Earned value for Jira projects.
Diagramming
Open a project's Bastion Helix page and find Diagrams. Create a diagram or import an uncompressed .drawio file. Every save keeps a version; the last thirty are kept. Export to .drawio at any time. See draw.io diagrams in Jira.
Workflow automation
On a project's Bastion Helix page, find Automation and create a rule: a trigger, conditions and actions. Use Test run on an issue to see what the rule would do without changing anything, then switch it on. Each run keeps a log of every condition and action.
Email handling
On a project's Bastion Helix page, find Email handling and choose New channel. The channel gets a private address; point your own mail routing at it (Cloudflare Email Routing, Postmark, SendGrid, Mailgun or any HTTPS POST). The channel's Mail log lists every message and what happened to it. See Email to Jira with Cloudflare.
Workforce Intelligence
A Jira admin opens Bastion Helix settings → Workforce Intelligence — setup. Under Data sources: switch on Claude Code telemetry, add the GitHub webhook, and optionally run the billing script. Under Contributors, join people's accounts; under Who can see it, name viewers. The overview is on Apps → Bastion Helix. See Claude Code spend per Jira issue.
Uninstalling
A site administrator can uninstall the app from Settings → Apps → Manage apps. Worklogs, issues and comments the app wrote stay in Jira, because they are ordinary Jira data. The app's own storage is deleted by Atlassian under its data retention policy for uninstalled apps.
Getting help
Email support@bastionhelix.com. See Support for what to include.