Setup and Maintenance: We're new to JIRA!

[Christina Strauss]

My team works on monthly deadlines. We collect data from multiple sources per each client each month, clean and interpret that data and submit one final product per client around the 9th of every month.

Originally I thought to create one project for all of my team's work with no end date, each Epic also having no end date and being the client level and each story having a monthly deadline and one one story per each data source under each epic/client.

I did this as I assumed it would be the easiest to maintain. Only needing to create a new "issue" at the story level every month. However, with no end dates, I am struggling to get any real or meaningful reporting as that requires sprints which require start and end dates.

Would it be better if I created a new Project every month and upload a CSV file with all the Epic and Story information, the only thing changing would be due dates? Is there an easier way to setup and maintain this?

Any advice is greatly appreciated! 

[Jack Brickey]

It seems to me that what you have is fine and what I would do. What you need however is to leverage a board to define you releases. Ideally a scrum board with one or two sprints per month. You can use the backlog to refine the input and define the sprint. You could do this with Kanban but generally Kanbans are timeless. 

[Christina Strauss]

Thank you, @Jack