Where I work, a kind of schizophrenia is the norm. It’s rare that I can work on any single Jira issue, from start to finish, without being pulled off of that issue and onto another. It’s also rare for me to have fully defined requirements backing any single issue, and so even when I think I’m finished, I usually need to revisit. What I’m trying to say is that there’s a whole lot of start/stop/resume. It’s not ideal, but it’s how we roll.

Prior to Mylyn, this was maddening. Mylyn, though, makes it easy to get into, out of, and back into issues at the point where I left off. In earlier versions (I’m thinking around the Eclipse 3.3 timeframe), Mylyn would contribute a toolbar item that made it braindead simple to navigate previous tasks. It is a little purple arrow which looks like this:

When you want to work on a previously worked-on issue, you simply hit the arrow, pick your previous issue from the list, and you’re back in the context of that issue. It is, no question, my most frequently used toolbar item.

Around the 3.4 timeframe, it went missing from a fresh Eclipse install. Here’s how to get it back:

1. Window – Customize Perspective
2. Select the “Command Groups Availability” tab
3. In the “Available Command Groups” pane, scroll down toward the bottom and find the “Task Navigation Extras” checkbox. Toggle it. Save your windows
4. Exult!

Here’s what the Command Groups tab should look like:

While you’re poking around the Command Groups, note that you can also deselect stuff that you don’t use, which can aid in noise reduction. Enjoy.

--marc