The Ultimate Jira Dashboard Guide | Laojie Solutions (2023)

Reporting is essential for any team looking to improve as it tells you where to improve. Without them, you're shooting in the dark.

For teams working on Jira, Jira Dashboard is the best reporting tool you'll ever have. With the help of our dashboard plugin,Custom charts for Jira, you can get them to tell truly compelling data stories that inspire your team to action.

This guide provides tips and tricks for getting the most out of your Jira dashboard, so you and your team can see at a glance what's working and what's not, without having to search.

Jira Dashboard Basics

There are two different ways to report in Jira.

the first isproject reportwhere you go to an individual project, go to the table, click on Reports and create the desired report from the list.

the other iscontrol panel reportwhere you can add multiple references to multiple projects on one screen for a more complete view of everything you're working on. The reports you paste into Jira dashboards are called "goods".

Once the Jira dashboard is created, you don't need to do anything else. All reports are automatically updated with the latest data each time the dashboard is reloaded. You can also configure them to refresh periodically. This makes the dashboard report a faster way to report. For project reports, you have to build them one by one on separate screens and the data is corrected when you run them. As a result, project reports provide a snapshot of data, while dashboards provide a dynamic near-real-time view.

Learn more aboutThe difference between reports and widgets in Jiraand why we think gadgets are better.

Jira dashboard widgets and how to use them

Jira Dashboard Gadgets are graphs, charts, tables, or graphs that display Jira data and can be accessed and configured directly in the Jira Dashboard. All the different "windows" that appear on the dashboard screen are graphical elements.

Jira ships with a number of widgets right out of the box. However, while these widgets are certainly handy, they are very limited in what and how to display data. Jira Custom Charts is a dashboard reporting plugin that lets youCreate more customizable charts and graphs right in your dashboard, the key is that it's as easy to use as a native gadget. This means you can replace the native widgets with custom graph versions and have more control over your data.

Many project reports have widget versions. For example, you can go to a project and run an "Issues Created and Resolved" report, or add the "Issues Created and Resolved" widget to your dashboard. So we recommend using dashboard reports instead of project reports whenever possible because dashboards are better and you don't haveneedMainly project exhibitions.

Additionally, you can use custom charts on the dashboard. So if you want, you can replace the native Cases Open vs. Closed (only available as a line chart) with Cases Created vs. Closeda bar graphUse a custom chart.

Custom charts are also widgets. Once installed, you can add it like any other gadget (by clicking theadding gadgets).

How to build a BAD Jira dashboard

When you create a Jira dashboard to show your team, you're literally writing a story with diagrams. Like all stories, they need to be told well if you want the audience to react in a certain way.

Here are some ways you can end up with a bad dashboard and bad data history.

too many gadgets

If you add too many characters or the plot is too complicated, the story can be confusing or even illogical. If your Jira dashboard has too many widgets, your audience won't be able to understand the message you're trying to convey.

We recommend no more than 6 widgets/diagrams per Jira dashboard. If you want to see more data, create another dashboard. It's better to have multiple smaller dashboards for specific use cases than one huge dashboard that tries to show everything. For a dashboard to effectively communicate information at a glance, it's best to keep it simple.

Too much text

A cluttered Jira dashboard serves no one. Of course you might want toList of Jira issues in the dashboard.Useful to display various information about your problem in one place. But at most each dashboard has 1 issue list. A good dashboard is all about data visualization and a list is not a visualization. They ask the viewers to interpret the data to understand the essence of the story. You can't tell a good, clear data story if you ask your audience to tell it for you.

Irrelevant charts/graphs

Avoid charts with data points that don't interest your audience. For example, if you use a large number of different case states, not all cases are displayed. Just show what's relevant to what you're trying to say. Likewise, don't create a chart with multiple people assigned if you just want to convey information about your main group.

Bad dashboards can also contain the wrong combination of charts. Charts are useful on their own, but when combined, they render the entire dashboard irrelevant. Consider the dashboard below. It includes a tile chart of just my issues, a pie chart of the project status, a bar chart of all project issues by status, and a bar chart of the average issue age. All these references are great, but who cares at the same time? This dashboard is a story made up of four fictional chapters, all from different books.

wrong chart

Then, of course, there's the plain bad graph. Diagrams completely confuse viewers when they should be doing the opposite and make the message clearer.

You know what the hell this is...

Choosing the wrong graph type for data points can also result in a bad graph. For example, we love Old Street pie charts (read usA staunch defense of the pie charts, comparing them to Aquaman), but we know they don't work in all cases. like here:

It's hard to say which part is the biggest. However, if we try to use a bar chart...

Ah, much better.

Of course, some bad charts come from bad data, like these gems below. Honestly, if there's a problem with the story you're about to tell…don't tell it.

Sometimes the data itself isn't bad, but then your platform is. For example, native Jira has the disadvantage of duplicating values ​​such as multiple "todo" and "complete" statuses when creating next-generation projects. As a result, you get a pie chart that looks like the one in the lower right corner. Quite confusing.Custom charts for JiraDuplicate fields and states are automatically merged, resulting in cleaner charts, as shown on the left in the image below.

See more examplesVisualize good and bad dataor learn more aboutImproved Jira data visualization.

How to make a good Jira dashboard

Here are 4 things you need to do to create a great Jira dashboard that tells a solid and compelling data story.

define your audience

Does the dashboard work for the whole team? Does this apply to individual team members? Is it for supervisors or other stakeholders? Although there may be crossovers, narrowing down your audience will make it easier to know what kind of story you want to tell.

make up a story, yes

You don't want your Jira dashboard to be the visual equivalent of a list of events. You want it to engage recipients, move them, inspire them to act. But in reality it is not.plotI am doing.

Your story may relate to the fact that some carriers take longer to resolve customer requests than others and their customer satisfaction drops. To create a story about this, start from the beginning. Provide baseline information based on the workload of all contractors. Make your main points by discussing average time to resolution and Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) for each assignee. Then there's your main point: some contractors outperform others, and you need to look at why that is. Finally, various diagrams are created that allow you to tell the story in a concise way.

Effective data storytelling sparks conversations about how to improve it. In this case, the team asks if the workload is not properly balanced or if some representatives need more help/training.

Learn more aboutHow to tell a compelling data story.

Make your diagrams easy to understand

For your story to go viral, you need easy-to-understand graphics. So avoid all the pitfalls of bad charts above and make sure you choose the right chart type for your data points.

To make it easier to understand, add labels and descriptions to the diagram. Display percentage. Tell your audience what the colors mean. Embed links in Confluence pages where they will provide context and define metrics.

Choosing the right color is especially important. It would be strange to have a RAG (Red Amber Green) chart if you don't actually have a RAG color. As it happens, in native Jira you can't. Blue is green, orange is orange, red is yellow. And you can't change that shit because there are no pre-made color adjustments. However, if you use custom Jira charts, you can create RAG charts that are actually RAGs. I like this:

Make your charts easy to maintain

If it takes a lot of time and effort to maintain your reports and dashboards, you'll end up not maintaining them properly. Over time, they will start showing inaccurate data.

Here are some ways to make dashboard maintenance easier:

• Report static data points, such as custom fields and elements, instead of tags.We know tagging Jira topics is popular, but over time you start getting slightly different versions of the same tag due to typos, abbreviations, etc. Then you have to do a lot of manual cleaning. As your reports become more formal, we recommend that you rely less on tags.
• Create and use templates.Custom Jira charts make this possibleCreate a Jira diagram templateFor shared use cases, this is great for quickly creating future dashboards. With the simple search widget, you can use tags forCreate different combinations of charts for different audiencesInstead of creating a whole new dashboard for everyone.
• Avoid hardcoded dates.In custom Jira charts, you can use dynamic dates, which are more flexible and make it easier to update the dashboard.

You can create different types of Jira dashboards

usJira's quick and easy reporting guideThere are a wide variety of dashboards that can be created using native Jira widgets and custom Jira widgets. More experienced Jira users can use Adaptavist's Scriptrunner and the EazyBI BI platform to create dashboards.

The Recipe includes a dashboard for daily standups, a dashboard for flashbacks, and a dashboard that tracks time, story points, and running totals instead of simply counting issues.

For support teams using Jira Service Management (JSM), there is also a very insightful dashboard for tracking customer satisfaction. (In addition to the cookbook, the JSM team may want to see our article on mapping to useIT Service Management (ITSM) MonitoringEspecially forMeasure performance against service level agreements(SLA)).

The cookbook also explains how to migrate Jira dashboard reports to Confluence, with the Jira Charts macro or sister app, for custom Jira charts,Custom Jira charts for Confluence.Using custom Jira Confluence diagrams, you canCreate charts, graphs, and entire dashboards with Jira data right on Confluence pages.

Share Jira dashboards internally

The Jira dashboard can be shared with internal users by simply copying and pasting a link into it, as long as they have permission to view it. This is usually where the problem arises. After sharing a Jira dashboard internally, the common response is "I don't have access to it" or "All widgets are empty".

To avoid access issues, make sure permissions are set correctly before sharing anything.

When deciding who to share Jira dashboards and filters with, you have several options:

private (default)

• Only the dashboard owner has access

Club

• Anyone in the selected group can gain access
• In Jira Cloud, you can only share dashboards and filters with groups you belong to

People

• Any internet user can view the dashboard or filter
• This ensures that anonymous users can only see potential issues if the problematic project is also set to Public in the View Details and Publish permission combinations

My organization (cloud only)

• Organizations is Atlassian's site-level management system built specifically for the cloud
• You can find documentationHere

Any logged in user (servers and data centers only)

• Any user who can login to the Jira instance has access to the dashboard or filter
• If the problematic project is also set to "Any Logged In" in the View Project and Publish permission combinations, then only logged in users will be able to see the underlying issues.

Make your dashboard easy to find

A dashboard that no one looks at is useless. Sharing dashboards is one thing, but you also want to be able to easily find them when users need them. No matter where your team is working, you can use shortcuts to get to them, including project sidebars, Confluence sidebars, Confluence login pages, and more. Also, make it easy for teams to find them when they visitsee all dashboardsinsidepanelDropdown menus that tell you what these dashboards show by giving them clear and descriptive names.

Share your Jira dashboardfrom outsideThis is hard. But there are many options...

Export Jira dashboard

A better Jira PDF exporterAllows you to export the dashboard as a PDF document. Then you can email it, print it, or share it with anyone you want. You can even customize the appearance of the dashboard by changing the layout, adding company branding and showing/hiding certain widgets.

Share Jira dashboards live externally

The problem with the PDF export option is that you are sharingmotionlessDashboard view. You must re-export (again) to continue sharing updated data. Ideally, you should be able to share the fileLiveJira Dashboards outside the snapshot.

Jira native only provides one way to share live dashboards outside of your instance, and that's to share a dashboard (and an underlying project). However, this means that the dashboard and all issues on it are visible and searchableanyoneIn connection.

Alternatively, custom charts have a shared dashboard feature that lets youShare dashboards with clientsIn the Jira service management portal. Over time, the shared dashboards feature will allow you to share dashboards with everyone via a public link without making your work public. Sowait for further information!

Rebuild a working Jira dashboard in Confluence

If you're a Confluence user, one way to share your Jira dashboards with people who can use Confluence but not Jira is to use the Jira for Confluence custom charts app. This app allows you to create a Jira dashboard from a Confluence page, meaning you can create the exact same charts and arrange them exactly as you would in the dashboard. Executives, customers, and other groups who have permission to view the Confluence page will be able to view and interact with your diagram.

Anyway...

• There are two types of reports in Jira: project reports and dashboard reports. Dashboards are traditionally used to provide a higher level of information, but now you can replace most of the reports in a dashboard with dashboard widgets and have them all in one place. You can also useCustom charts for JiraReplace more design references with dashboard versions.
• A bad Jira dashboard is filled with too many widgets or too much text. It can also contain a lot of bad graphs because the data is wrong, the graphs aren't adjusted enough to show what you want, or you've chosen the wrong graph type for those data points.
• A good Jira dashboard is one where you narrow down your audience, decide what story you want to tell with your data, and create the most appropriate charts to tell it. It is also an approach that is easy to understand and maintain.
• If you want people to notice your dashboards, share them! And make them easy to find by adding a link to them in the right place. However, make sure users can see them by making sure the permissions are set correctly.
• Sharing Jira dashboards externally is difficult, but the Atlassian Marketplace offers many options. You can export to PDF with something like thisA better Jira PDF exporteror try custom charts if you want to share a real-time dashboard with the latest data. Custom Jira charts have a Shared Dashboard feature that allows you to share your entire dashboard with your customers in the Jira Service Management Portal. and its sister application,Custom Jira charts for Confluence, which lets you create and share charts and dashboards on Confluence pages.