Custom Reports in Jira

Jira offers many ways to track time for processed tickets. These functions are simple to use, but their possibilities are pretty limited. In the next section, you’ll get to know how to use time tracking and how to create reports:

Therefore, it is important to check, if you have all needed admin rights. Moreover, you have to set up your templates for time tracking in a correct way and activate the right authorization types in the menu.

If you have the correct settings, you can create time reports in Jira. You can create basic reports if you go to the ’Reports’ section, click Forecast & management and select ’Time Tracking Report’. Then select your preferred settings and click ‘continue’ and you’ll receive your time report.

If you work longer with Jira time tracking, you will notice that this function has limits in its efficiency. The following seven pain points will show you why basic time tracking in Jira is limited:

1. You can not estimate for which tickets the most time was spent in a specific period of time.

2. You can not group your time tracking through an epic, label, component or any other Jira field.

3. You can not determine time for multiple projects of one client.

4. You can not create reports for specific users, groups or teams.

5. You can not adjust mistakes based on your time tracking results.

6. For client projects: You can not compare the hours that are established in the contract and the logged hours a team or user has worked. This could result in a bad controllable budget of your project.

7. You can not determine the logged time for a specific user for invoicing.

Because of the mentioned reasons, the basic Jira time tracking is helpful but restricted in its functions. A simple and easy way to close this gap is the Jira app Report Builder. This tool allows you to create every Jira report you might ever need, cause it provides two variants of reports for you: report templates and Open Source reports.

A report template is a great tool to create reports fast and easily through its predetermined settings. You can create reports like timelines and cake diagrams there. Furthermore, with the Scripted Reports function of Report Builder, you can create different Open Source reports. Here you can configure reports with HTML and JavaScript. Every created report can be exported as CSV or PDF and provided for your supervisor or client. Report Builder is the smart solution for all of the mentioned disadvantages of basic Jira time tracking and a real „all-rounder” in Jira time tracking.

The Scripted Report „Created vs. Resolved“ is very useful for heads of big teams. This report allows you to compare the number of created and resolved tickets for a specific time frame. This empowers the team lead to analyze the workload of a team, user or project and to make decisions based on the won data.

Through choosing a specific time frame and a user, team or project as JQL scope a cake or line diagram gets created. These diagrams display the relationship of the created and resolved tickets in a graphical way. This created graphic can be the base of workload analyzes afterwards.

All used parameters can be configured and adjusted individually with HTML and JavaScript.

• Report Builder: What it is & what it does

• First Response Time

• Created vs. Resolved

• Key metrics for activity
• Service management key metrics
• Top Tickets by engagement

The default time tracking function of Jira is for team leads, users and for the work with clients a very useful tool to overlook, calculate and manage the workload in Jira.

The basic function can make sense, if you’re just getting started with time management and want to get an overview about the possibilities of time tracking. But because of its restricted functions, the basic version is too limited, if you want more detailed reports that are useful for your everyday work life.

If you want to create comprehensive, detailed and meaningful reports that can be configured with HTML or JavaScript, Report Builder is the right choice for you. Report Builder is the toolkit for every report you might ever need!