Links Explorer Comments and Feature Request

[Andy Ukasick]

Hi, I downloaded your version 1.2 and I seems to work very well. It's very rapidly rendered, it has a nice clean logical layout. I like the way the relationships are labeled; it's very easy to understand at a glance. I also tried your new reporting feature and I was very impressed with how fast it rendered and how cleanly it showed everything.

Some requests:

Provide a means in the report to automatically expand all and also an option to print it or export to excel, etc.

There is no support for Epic/Story (Or Epic/anything) relationships in GreenHopper. This is a critical need. We would love to see a tab in the GreenHopper Rapid Boards where the links are displayed just as they are in the traditional way of viewing an isssue. We would also like to see support for GreenHopper Epics in the reports and in dispayed hierarchies off of issues.

With the reports; Reporting on a version is good, but we also need to be able to generate the same report for a single GH Sprint. GH Sprints are no longer "Versions". I'm unable to find a way to create a filter for this either.

Keep up the good work.

[DPKJ · Accepted solution]

Hello Andrew,

I have released 1.5 of Links Explorer, which takle some request given by you, please have a look at it, and let me know if it looks good.

Regards

Deepak J.

[Mohammed Khadir]

Hello

Is there a way to add what fields to view when you click on View more information on the eye icon in the issue list.

[DPKJ]

Currently there is no such facility, but I am trying hard to get this done.

I have been not able to work on plugin due to earning restrictions at Atlassian Marketplace.

[Mohammed Khadir]

Hello Deepak,

Do you mean JIRA will not allow you to pull that type of info in your plugin to show more information on.

Thanks

[DPKJ]

No it is not like that.

I have tried to build this functionality for local usage but, showing custom fields and description is getting quite tough. But I will try to release version with other fields quite soon.

[Chris Cope]

Deepak, I just wanted to thank you for a great plugin. Also, I wanted to second that auto-expand (say 3 levels) would be a great feature.

[DPKJ]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for you appriciation.

This is a good feature and I will try to push this in next update. I haven't released in sometime so, I think small features like this can make a good enhancement.

Thanks once again.

[DPKJ]

Hi Jason,

I have tried to do this, but the view excel export was not looking good enough to release, on PDF can printing tree would work for you?

[Jason Lang]

Any comment on when the ability to export the link/report results to Excel will be completed?

That's the last hold-up here before we could adopt this.

[Ken Graham]

Thanks Deepak, I'm using the "Links Explorer - Saved Filter Report". And you are absolutely right about the issues in different "Fix Versions". Due to how we use Zephyr, we have saved all the test-issues for System Test in Fix Version "System Test". And the different test-issues are linked to issues and epics in previous versions. Is it possible to have the "Saved Filter Report" cross-versioning?

[Ken Graham]

Hi, I'm currently evaluating Links Explorer 1.5.5.

We have a need to find all epics and stories without link type "Tested by" (a custom link type for our Zephyr for Jira tests).

In the "Links Explorer" reports, we can select and deselct all links including "Tests" and "Tested by", but the actual custom links are not visible in the tree view.

I'd expected the tree view in the report to show all links, including custom made. Is this possible?

NB: Custom link types are visible in the "Links Explorer tab" in the issue-form.

[Ken Graham]

NB: Custom link types are visible in the "Links Explorer tab" in the issue-form.

[DPKJ]

Hi Ken,

Can you specify which report you are using, I have just now tested both (version and saved filter report) report with custom link issue type and it is working fine.

[DPKJ]

One more point, in report both the issue (linker and linking) should have same version (for fix version report) or should fall in criteria of search (for saved filter report), otherwise the issue will not be visible.

[Ken Graham]

Thanks Deepak, I'm using the "Links Explorer - Saved Filter Report". And you are absolutely right about the issues in different "Fix Versions". Due to how we use Zephyr, we have saved all the test-issues for System Test in Fix Version "System Test". And the different test-issues are linked to issues and epics in previous versions. Is it possible to have the "Saved Filter Report" cross-versioning?

[DPKJ]

Hi Ken,

Saved filter report is generic report, on issue navigation page you can define any JQL search as saved filter (for you case issues having latest and previous fix version), and it will be available as selection parameter in "Saved filter report".

I hope this help.

[DPKJ]

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for the appriciation.

I am tyring hard to acheive auto expand, I will let you know when this feature comes out.

[Andy Ukasick]

One quick suggestion: can you have the report start with Epics at the highest level? Right now it goes Story --> Epic --> Story --> Subtask etc. Yet the real heirarchy is Epic --> Story --> subtask

We need to be able to expand a single epic and see all the stories under it. This way the traceability from Epics to Stories to Subtasks can be easily seen and documented.

[DPKJ]

Hi Andrew, thanks for you suggestion.

I think, you can have this kind of view in "Saved Filter Report",

• First, reorder your issue types in project configuration screen (in your case, put Epic on the top and then Story and then Subtask etc).
• On issue navigation page, create a filter with "ORDERY BY" clause for issueType (ORDER BY issuetype ASC), see if Epic come before Stories, or change ASC to DESC.
• Save the filter (you can also add above clause to existing filter).
• Go to reports section and select the saved filter, see if the result is ok.

Let me know if this helps, I have tried it in my configuration and it worked all right.

If it doesn't work, I will try to include this kind of report in Links Explorer 1.5 or 1.6 (currently, I can't estimate the amout of time required).

One quick request, I will be greaful, if you can write a review and rate Links Explorer on Atlassian Marketplace page.

[Andy Ukasick]

Hi Deepak,

I tried what you suggested and was not able to get it to show epics --> stories --> sub-tasks.

What I'm interested in is a report that can be used to show all issues that went into a sprint or a release (version) displayed in a way that shows traceability from epics to stories to the sub-tasks of stories. There would also be Bugs, perhaps ordinary ad-hoc Tasks, etc. All of our projects are required to produce such a report. Doing this with an ordinary filter can return all the data needed, but it is in a very unfriendly format as it requires locating an Epic, then searching the list for it's associated Stories, then searcing through each of those for their various sub-tasks. What we need is an exportable report (perhaps in excel, perhaps just as a pdf) that presents this information in a friendly fashion. The old Atlassian plugin here https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.pyxis.jira.links.hierarchy.reports used to do a fairly good job of this in it's reports using a collapsed view.

[DPKJ]

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for your support.

Your comment have two parts,

1. View, and
2. Excel export.

For one, I will take a look and will try to provide you with a separate report that takes cares of your issue. I have logged this for 1.5 or 1.6 of Links Explorer.

Second, I has got request from other user for this (excel export) feature. Currently, I am looking for meaningful view, to be dumped in excel or csv export. I will take a look into referece (old atlassian pluing) provided by you. If you have any better idea for exporting, do let me know.

Cheers!!!

Deepak J.

[DPKJ]

Two more point,

1. Have you tried solution proposed by me with both "Fixed Version Report" and "Saved Filter Report", or with just one. Saved Filter report is one that can help you in this scenerio.
2. Are you interest in single issue report or multiple issue report (like existing report in Links Explorer)?

[Andy Ukasick]

1) I did try it with the saved filter report and several different permutations of it as well.

2) Multiple issue, similar to this: https://studio.plugins.atlassian.com/wiki/download/attachments/2261483/6-version-tree.jpg

[DPKJ]

Thanks Andrew, I will work on it, and will let you as soon as this feature is out.

[Andy Ukasick]

Please don't do it just for me. Only do it if you feel it is a worthwhile feature to offer. That said though, I do feel that a great many potential users would appreciate having the functionality that I described.

[DPKJ]

Hello Andrew,

I can uderstand it is good feature.

[Andy Ukasick]

It looks great! One request for the report. Could we get a way to auto expand the linkage trees by a number of levels? Perhaps be able to select 1 or 2 or 3 levels deep? Or maybe 1-5?

The kind of linkage that we most need to show is Epic --> Story --> Sub-Task for GreenHopper.

[DPKJ]

Hi Andrew,

Please take a look at new version of Links Explorer, I have added Greenhopper support in this version.

Will continue to work on your other valuable requests.

[DPKJ]

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for your suggestions. Its has got three parts, so I would like to address each part separately,

1. Expand all
   • This is a good feature to implement,
   • But JIRA links are graph, so I need to take care of cyclic dependency.
   • Limited functionality that I can provide is, single level expand all
2. Excel support
   • Let me think about a meaningful layout for Excel.
3. Green Hopper support
   • I need to do some exploration for this feature.
   • Shortly, I will take it up.

Thanks once again for your suggestions. If you have anything else in mind, please let me know, I am always open for ideas and feedback.