Jira Reporting & Dashboards | ACP-420 Study Session

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Hey all - this past Monday we got into Jira Service Management Reporting (7% of the exam). Personally, I use JQL and dashboards on a very regular basis, so getting some more time with the built-in reports was a good refresher.

The built-in reports offer a starting point for team metrics, but I honestly haven't used them as much as I should. Despite my lack of experience they offer teams great insight into how their project is doing (especially in terms of identifying bottle necks or other challenges). I do feel they can be a bit challenging to use, and have some limitations that make ongoing analysis hard (e.g. data over 1 year ago).

Reports also have built in security:

1. Project admins can view and configure them. This can frustrate agents who want to get in there and build reports.
2. Agents can view reports. I encourage my agents to regularly review reports to get an idea of what's going on. The more eyes looking at info, the more likely it is folks will find, and fix, problems!
3. Customers and collaborators can't even view them. This makes sense given those folks aren't in the project, so they don't need to see these metrics

For deeper insights and long-term trends (beyond the 365-day limit!) Filters let you pinpoint specific work items. I think of it like applying filters to a massive spreadsheet. The fields are the columns, and filters I apply will remove rows that don't meet my criteria. You can use Basic Filters (dropdowns) for quick isolation or the more powerful Jira Query Language (JQL) - or "Jayquill" - for complex queries. 

If you want a really deep dive into Jayquill check out my 2+ hour course on the topic!

Once you've got your filtered data, Dashboards bring it to life with gadgets like issue statistics and created vs. resolved charts. Pro tip: build your filters first for more targeted dashboards and remember to share your filters and dashboards! They're private by default, so if you forget to add folks they won't be able to see any information in them.

I find Dashboards to be a great tool, but many teams I work with have more robust reporting requirements. Typically I find them looking for apps to extend dashboards, or even reporting tools like EazyBI to help provide some more power in reporting.

Check out more about our study session here.

Or view the entire thing below.