Vocabulary
Foundation introduces a few new words on top of standard Jira vocabulary. Here’s what each one means and when you’ll use it.
A lens is the core unit of Foundation: a saved, hierarchical view of Jira issues. Think of it as a saved portfolio view. A lens has an owner, a tree of rows, one or more views, and a set of permissions.
Each lens can hold up to 1,000 issues in the MVP.
Flex Item
Section titled “Flex Item”A Flex Item is a non-issue row — a folder or heading that exists only inside Foundation and isn’t stored in Jira. Use Flex Items to create structure that doesn’t map to a Jira parent relationship (themes, workstreams, milestones, quarterly buckets). Flex Items can contain issues, other Flex Items, and Sync Agents.
Sync Agent
Section titled “Sync Agent”A Sync Agent is an automation rule that pulls issues into a lens. Two types ship in the MVP:
- JQL Insert — runs a JQL query and inserts every matching issue under a parent row.
- Child Extend — pulls every child of a given parent issue (via Jira’s Parent relationship).
Sync Agents keep a lens current automatically. You’ll rarely need to run them by hand.
A view is a saved configuration of columns, sort order, grouping, filters, and conditional formatting inside a lens. One lens can have many views — for example, a Planning view, a Delivery view, and a Status Review view. One view is always the default.
Views belong to the lens, so switching views is instant.
Foundation Home
Section titled “Foundation Home”Foundation Home is the root page of the app. It lists every lens you can access in a split layout: a searchable list on the left, a preview of the selected lens on the right. From here you create, open, rename, duplicate, delete, and share lenses.
Permission levels
Section titled “Permission levels”A lens has four access levels, from least to most powerful:
| Level | Can |
|---|---|
| view | Open the lens and read its rows |
| edit | Inline-edit fields, add/remove rows, manage Sync Agents |
| control | Everything above, plus share the lens and change owner |
| Owner | Implicit control; exactly one per lens |
Layered on top of lens-level access, every user must also have Browse Project permission in Jira to see an individual issue’s row. If Jira hides an issue from a user, Foundation hides its row too.
Refresh-on-open
Section titled “Refresh-on-open”Foundation caches Jira issues so your lens loads fast. When you open a lens, the backend refreshes any stale data from Jira before rendering. There’s no live mirror in the MVP — fields update via Jira’s free event triggers, but you’ll see the freshest view right after you open or refresh.