How to Share Your Jira Roadmap (Internally and Externally)

So, you did it. You wrestled with Jira, mapped out your project or product strategy, and now you have a roadmap. It looks good, connects all the dots, and shows where you're headed. Fantastic. But a roadmap sitting unseen in Jira isn't doing much good, right? The real challenge often starts now: how do you actually share this plan with everyone who needs to see it? We're talking about your team, sure, but also stakeholders across the company, maybe even partners or clients.

Sharing your roadmap helps get everyone on the same page, builds support for your plans, manages expectations (politely!), and makes sure the whole organization is pulling together. You probably remember the old way: emailing PowerPoint slides or spreadsheets that were out of date the second you hit send. Sending a "Roadmap_vFinal_FINAL2.pptx" is so 2020.

What we really want is a single, reliable source for all roadmaps, something that stays current and is easy for people to find and understand. But if Jira is your tool of choice, figuring out how to share your roadmap feels surprisingly complicated. There are different roadmap features in Jira itself, different ways Jira is set up (Cloud or Data Center), tricky permissions, and various methods for getting the information out there. It can feel like a maze.

Don't worry, this guide is your map through that maze. We'll walk through the built-in ways to share from Jira, talk about plugging it into Confluence, look at simple export options, and explore how tools from the Atlassian Marketplace can make life much easier. Let’s get your roadmap out there and working for you.

What kind of jira roadmap are you using?

Before you share, you need to know exactly what you've built your roadmap in. Jira Software has two main roadmap features, and they work quite differently, which affects how you can share them:

Basic roadmaps (Now called "Timeline" in Jira Cloud)

What it is: Think of this as the starter roadmap. It’s designed for a single team planning their work within one project. It’s useful for plotting epics on a simple timeline based on start and due dates, giving the team a visual overview for the next few weeks or months.

Who gets it: Good news here, it’s included in all Jira Software Cloud versions (even Free) and works in both company-managed and team-managed projects. Just remember Atlassian now calls it "Timeline" in the Cloud interface.

The catch: It's strictly for one project. If you need to plan across multiple teams, see how work connects across projects, manage team capacity, or think about bigger strategic items above epics, Timeline won't cut it. You'll likely hit its limits pretty quickly as your planning gets more complex.

Advanced roadmaps (Now called "Plans" in Jira Cloud)

What it is: It’s built for the messy reality of coordinating work across several teams and multiple projects. Plans let you track progress towards bigger company goals, see dependencies between different teams' work, figure out if you have the people to do the work (capacity planning), and even play with "what-if" scenarios without messing up your live Jira issues. It connects the team-level execution ('how') to the overall strategy ('why'), often using hierarchy levels like Initiatives above epics.

Who gets it: This one isn't free. You need a Jira Software Cloud Premium or Enterprise plan. If your company hosts its own Jira, it's an app you install for Jira Data Center. It mostly works with company-managed projects in the Cloud right now. And again, the name change: it's officially "Plans" in Jira Cloud these days.

What it offers: Seeing work from many projects in one place, building custom hierarchies (like Themes > Initiatives > Epics), spotting cross-team dependencies, planning team capacity, trying out different plan versions, and powerful filters to create specific views.

The catch: All that power means it takes more effort to set up and learn. Getting Plans working well involves configuring where it pulls issues from, setting up your hierarchy correctly, and managing team settings.

That "Premium" hurdle

This difference in availability matters. Teams often start simple with Timeline but find they need the cross-project view of Plans as they grow. Then they face a choice: pay up for Jira Premium or Enterprise, try to jury-rig a solution with dashboards or exports (often messy), or look for help from the Atlassian Marketplace. This gap is a big reason why alternative roadmap tools exist.

1. Keeping it Internal with Jira links

The most straightforward way to share is just sending a link directly from Jira. But, and it's a big but, it only works if the recipient has the right access.

How you do it: When you're looking at your Timeline or Plan in Jira, click the Share button in the top right. Then click the Copy link button at the bottom of the dialog and send that link to your colleague.

The Catch: Permissions, Permissions, Permissions:

• For Timeline (Basic): Access usually follows standard project permissions. If someone can view the project issues, they can probably see the Timeline too.

• For Plans (Advanced Roadmaps): This gets much more complicated. To see a Plan, a person needs several layers of access:

  1. A Jira Software license. Can't even log in without it.

  2. A specific 'Plans' permission level globally (at least 'Plans Viewer' for read-only).

  3. Access granted to that specific Plan (they can be private or restricted).

  4. 'Browse Project' permission for every single project included in the Plan. Miss one, and data might be missing or the plan won't load correctly.

The Big Roadblock: Doesn't Work for People Without Jira Access: This is the main drawback. You simply cannot use this method to share a live, interactive roadmap with anyone who doesn't have a Jira license and the right permissions. Forget showing it easily to executives, clients, or partners this way. Workarounds like making projects public are usually a bad idea for security reasons and might not even show the roadmap visually.

Permission Headaches: Even sharing internally can be a pain. It’s common for someone to share a Plan link only for the recipient to get an error message. Tracking down which of the many permission layers is misconfigured takes time and patience.

The Verdict: Sending a direct Jira link works fine for quick shares between team members who are already licensed and permissioned Jira users. For anyone else, or even sometimes within your own team, it's often a non-starter due to permissions.

2. Putting your roadmap in Confluence

Since Jira and Confluence work so closely together, embedding your roadmap directly onto a Confluence page seems like the perfect solution for wider visibility, right?

How it Works (Cloud): This is pretty slick in Confluence Cloud. Just copy the URL of your Jira Timeline or the 'Share' link from your Plan. Paste that link onto a Confluence page. Confluence Smart Links magically turn it into an embedded view of your roadmap.

How it Works (Data Center/Server): For Plans, you usually need an extra app called "Advanced Roadmaps for Jira in Confluence." You get a special Confluence link from the Plan's Share menu and then use a specific macro on your Confluence page. Embedding a basic Timeline this way isn't really a standard feature.

Why It's Appealing:

• Live Updates: The roadmap you see in Confluence generally stays up-to-date with changes made in Jira.

• Add Context: You can surround the embedded roadmap with text explaining the strategy, documenting risks, linking related pages, all right there in Confluence.

The catch: To successfully view that embedded roadmap, a person needs both:

1. Permission to view the Confluence page.

2. An active Jira license plus all the necessary Jira permissions to see the underlying project(s) and the specific roadmap or Plan itself (including those 'Plans Viewer/User' roles for Plans).

If someone looking at the Confluence page is missing the Jira side of the permissions, they'll just see an error like "Data cannot be retrieved" or maybe an empty box. Forget about Confluence guests or users Browse anonymously seeing your roadmap this way, unless you've opened up your Jira project permissions in ways that are usually not recommended for security.

The Verdict: Embedding in Confluence is excellent for sharing roadmaps within internal teams who already live and breathe in both Jira and Confluence. It keeps the plan visible right alongside project documentation. But it absolutely fails as a way to publish live roadmaps to people without the right Jira licenses, whether they're internal stakeholders in other departments or external partners.

3. Taking a snapshot with exports (Images & CSV)

Okay, so live sharing has its limits, especially for people outside Jira. That's where exporting comes in. You can create static snapshots of your roadmap data.

Image export (PNG file):

Where to find it: Jira Cloud lets you export both Timeline (Basic) and Plans (Advanced Roadmaps) as a PNG image file using an 'Export' or 'Share > Export' menu option. This feature for Plans was a big community request. Older Jira Server/DC versions might lack this, forcing you to rely on screenshots.

How it works: Set up your Plan view just how you want it (apply filters, adjust settings). Use the export function, maybe select a date range. Jira generates a PNG image.

Why use it: Perfect for dropping a visual into a PowerPoint slide, adding it to a report, or attaching it to an email for people who don't use Jira. The export includes a helpful legend.

Downsides:

• It's Static: This is the biggest one. The image is a snapshot. As soon as data changes in Jira, your export is outdated. Keeping people informed means constantly re-exporting and sending new versions.

• Not Interactive: You can't click on anything, expand items, or filter the view. It's just a picture.

• Size Limits: The Cloud Plans PNG export can only handle up to 500 issues. For big plans, you have to filter heavily or make multiple exports. It also usually only captures the main timeline.

CSV export (Spreadsheet file):

Where to find it: Both Timeline and Plans usually have an option to export to CSV (check the 'Share' or 'Export' menus). You can also always export Jira issue data from the Issue Navigator using a JQL search.

How it works: Filter your Plan view to show the data you want, then hit export. You'll need 'Plans User' permission or higher.

Why use it: Good for digging into the data offline using Excel or Google Sheets, creating your own custom charts or reports, moving data to another system, making backups, or sharing raw data with people who like spreadsheets.

Downsides:

• Also Static: Same problem as PNGs, the data gets stale quickly.

• No Visuals: You lose the intuitive timeline view. It's just rows and columns of data. Making it visual again requires work in your spreadsheet tool.

• Hierarchy/Links Lost?: Representing the structure (like Epics containing Stories) or dependencies accurately in a flat CSV file can be tricky. Standard Jira exports often lose this richness.

• Data Limits: Standard Jira exports might cap out at 1000 issues. Plans export might have similar limits.

• Needs Cleanup: Exported data often needs some tidying up in the spreadsheet before it's useful.

Exports: The Workaround You Might Be Stuck With

For many teams relying only on Jira and Confluence's built-in features, these static PNG and CSV exports become the main way they share roadmaps with executives, clients, or other non-Jira users. Why? Because the live sharing options are blocked by license and permission requirements. While adding PNG export for Plans was helpful, the core problem remains: these exports are instantly outdated and require manual effort to refresh. This constant struggle is a major reason teams start looking for better solutions elsewhere.

4. Getting help from the Atlassian marketplace

When Jira's built-in options just aren't cutting it, the Atlassian Marketplace is full of apps designed to improve roadmapping, visualization, and sharing. Teams often look for apps to:

• Get better looking or more flexible roadmap visuals.

• Find easier ways to share, perhaps including read-only links for outsiders (though check the details carefully).

• Support specific ways of working, like the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe®).

• Add features Jira doesn't have, like detailed resource planning or cost tracking.

Sharing with Released

While many Marketplace apps focus on making planning inside Jira better, that core frustration of sharing outside Jira often remains. Released is different because it's a dedicated tool focused squarely on creating clear, professional, and shareable roadmap views specifically for your external audiences.

Where to find it: Once installed, Released can be accesses within Jira via the global Apps menu in the left-hand navigation.

How it works: Start by creating a new roadmap and linking the relevant Jira projects. Use filters or JQL to choose which issues appear, then group them into columns based on fields like status or team. Customize the visible fields. Once ready, publish the roadmap to publish it to a central portal, which can be public or restricted.

Why use it: Its primary purpose is to solve the problem of sharing roadmaps with people outside of Jira who don't have licenses. It allows you to create curated, controlled, and branded roadmap views specifically for stakeholders like executives, clients, or partners. Roadmaps can be updated with a single click, avoiding the staleness of static exports, and aims to simplify the external communication workflow compared to native Jira limitations.

Downsides:

• Cost: Being a separate platform, it involves an additional subscription cost. But it's pretty affordable.

• Cloud only: If you are a Data Center customer, you are out of luck. Released is only available for Cloud unfortunately.

If your biggest headache is getting your roadmap communicated clearly and securely to people outside your Jira instance, looking into a specialized tool like Released could save you a lot of time and effort compared to battling native limitations or using complex portfolio tools for a simple sharing task.

When looking at any app, always use the free trial period. Think about the real cost, how easy it is to set up and use, whether it solves your specific problem, and the vendor's support reputation.

Protecting your roadmap information

Whenever you share roadmap data, you need to think about security and access control.

• Permissions Rule Everything: Almost every sharing method relies on permissions somewhere: Jira project access, specific Plan roles (Viewer, User), Confluence page restrictions, maybe even settings within a Marketplace app.

• The Risks: Sharing a link without checking permissions could expose sensitive plans. Making projects public for 'easy' sharing is risky. Static files can be forwarded anywhere once they leave your control.

• Play it Safe:

  • Give people the minimum access they need (Viewer instead of User if they only need to see)

  • Review permissions regularly. Who still needs access to that sensitive Plan?

  • Check the security practices of any Marketplace apps you use.

  • Avoid anonymous access unless you fully understand and accept the risks. Authenticated sharing is safer.

  • When sharing filtered views (like from Plans), double-check your filters hide anything sensitive before you generate the link or embed code.

There's always a balance between making information easily accessible (especially for external folks) and keeping it secure. Native Jira tools often lean towards security through licenses. Exports offer wider reach but lose control. Apps like Released.so try to find a middle ground, offering controlled external sharing. You need to decide what level of risk is acceptable for your roadmap data.

Tailor your communication

Remember that publishing your roadmap involves technical steps, but its core purpose is effective communication.

• Think About Your Audience: What does your CEO need to see versus your development team versus a key customer? Their needs are very different.

• Tailor the View: Use filters in Plans or your chosen app to show the right level of detail. Hide the messy details for high-level views. Focus on relevant milestones for external partners.

• Pick the Right Format: Live views inside Jira/Confluence work for the core team. Static images or PDFs work for presentations. CSVs work for data crunchers. Dedicated platforms like Released.so work for controlled, potentially live, external sharing.

• Add the Story: Don't just show the timeline; explain why things are prioritized. Use the Confluence page, your email, or the presentation to provide context, define terms, and call out key changes or risks.

• Keep it Current: If using static exports, have a rhythm for updating them. If using live views, make sure the underlying Jira data is accurate!

• Make it a Conversation: Encourage questions and feedback. Does the roadmap give stakeholders what they need?

Which sharing method is right for you?

Let's boil it down. The best way to publish your Jira roadmap depends on who needs to see it, whether they need live data, and what tools and budget you have.

Scenario 1: Keeping your internal team synced

Best options:

Live Confluence embeds – Great for teams already using Confluence. Roadmaps stay up to date for anyone with a Jira license.

Released – Lets you centralize multiple roadmaps in a single shared portal, making it easy for teams to stay aligned.

Scenario 2: Sharing progress with management (with Jira licenses)

Best options:

Released – Create tailored roadmap views and share focused snapshots to match what leadership cares about.

Live Confluence embeds – Embed roadmaps directly alongside commentary or context in a Confluence page.

Scenario 3: Sharing with internal teams (no Jira licenses)

The challenge:

Jira’s native sharing falls short here.

Workarounds: Export as PNG or CSV, then share via Confluence—but these get stale fast.

Better option: Use Released to share always-up-to-date roadmaps without requiring Jira access.

Scenario 4: Communicating with external clients or the public

The challenge:

Most teams fall back on static exports (PDFs, PNGs, CSVs), but they require constant manual upkeep.

Better option: Released gives you a clean, live roadmap experience with fine-grained access control—no Jira licenses needed.

Bonus: Jira Product Discovery also supports limited public read-only sharing for specific views.

Scenario 3: Sharing with Other Internal Teams (No Jira Licenses)

The Challenge: Native tools struggle. Static Exports (PNG/CSV) are the fallback, but remember they get stale. This is a prime use case for apps like Released. Embedding exported images/PDFs on accessible Confluence pages is another workaround.

Scenario 4: Communicating with External Clients or the Public

The Big Challenge: Static Exports (PNG, CSV, app PDFs) are the most common approach with native tools, but require manual updates. For a more professional, dynamic, and controlled experience where viewers don't need Jira licenses, platforms like Released are purpose-built. Check them out. Jira Product Discovery also offers some public read-only views.

Final thoughts

Sharing your Jira roadmap effectively means understanding your options and their trade-offs. Native Jira links and Confluence embedding are great internally for licensed users but hit a wall externally. Static exports work for anyone but are instantly outdated and non-interactive. Marketplace apps add power but also cost and complexity.

The persistent headache for many teams is sharing current roadmap information easily and securely with people outside the Jira bubble.

So, what should you do?

1. Know Your Audience & Goal: Who are you sharing with and why? This guides every other decision.

2. Use Native Tools Smartly: Maximize Jira links and Confluence embeds for your internal, licensed teams.

3. Handle Exports Wisely: If you must use static exports for external sharing with native tools, accept their limits and have an update plan.

4. Explore the Marketplace Purposefully: If native tools aren't enough, especially for external sharing, look at apps. Seriously consider tools like Released.so if communicating with non-Jira stakeholders is your main pain point. Use those free trials!

5. Stay Secure: Manage permissions carefully.

6. Communicate Clearly: Tailor your roadmap view, add context, and keep the conversation going.

Publishing your Jira roadmap is an ongoing activity, integral to making your project or product succeed. By thinking through your audience, goals, and the tools available (including modern solutions like Released.so for external sharing), you can choose the methods that bring clarity, alignment, and informed decisions based on your strategic plans.