Grafana Jira Data Source

Overview

Get the whole picture of your development process by combining issue data from Jira with application performance data from other sources.

• Create annotations based on issue creation or resolution, to see the relationship between issues and metrics
• Track detailed Jira stats, like mean time to resolution and issue throughput

Connecting to Jira

Prerequisites

In order to use the plugin, you need an Atlassian account with access to a Jira project.

Configuration

Follow these instructions to create an API Token: https://confluence.atlassian.com/cloud/api-tokens-938839638.html

1. Log in to https://id.atlassian.com/manage/api-tokens.
2. Click Create API token.
3. From the dialog that appears, enter a memorable and concise Label for your token and click Create.
4. Click Copy to clipboard, then paste the token to your script, or elsewhere to save:

Querying Jira

From the Jira Query Editor you can select fields and query issues.

Filter and view issues

The Jira data source queries Jira for issues, which can represent bugs, user stories, support tickets, or other tasks in Jira. Using the query editor, you can choose the issue fields you'd like to display in Grafana (like Summary, Epic Name, and Created Date/Time), filter issues based on any of their fields like Project, Assignee, or Sprint with the Atlassian query language JQL. From there, you can display your data in a table or use Grafana Transformations to manipulate that issue data, run calculations, or turn the data into a time series graph.

Step 1. Select Fields

Click the dropdown and use type-ahead to select from any of the fields in your Jira instance, including custom fields. Some fields to try:

• Summary: the name of the issue

• Epic Name: the Epic that an issue belongs to

• Story Point Estimate: The number of Story Points the team has estimated for an issue

Step 2. Filter and/or Sort Issues

Enter any valid JQL expression to filter or sort your issues.

Transformations to augment JQL

While there are many Transformations in Grafana to choose from, the following provide a powerful augmentation to give JQL some of the features/power of SQL.

Group By This transformation provides a key feature that is not part of the standard Jira JQL syntax: Grouping. Using the Group By transformation, you can group by Sprints or other Issue fields, and aggregate by group to get metrics like velocity and story point estimates vs actual completed in a Sprint.

Outer Join Similar to SQL joins, you can join 2 or more queries together by common fields. This provides a way to combine datasets from queries and use other transformations to calculate values from multiple queries/datasets.

Add Field from Calculation Similar to SQL expressions, this transformation allows adding new fields to your dataset based on calculations of other fields. The fields used in the calculation can be from a single query or from queries you've joined together. You can also chain together calculations and perform calculations from calculated fields.

Using Transformations from Grafana to answer common questions

Now that you can perform basic Jira queries to find Issues, you can use Transformations to visualize, aggregate, group, and join datasets, along with many other types of transformations to transform simple results into answers for complex questions. Below are a few common questions and how to use transformations to answer them.

Question: How do I show Velocity per Sprint?

1. Select Fields: Sprint Name, Story point estimate
2. Add JQL Filter project = "Your Project" AND type != epic AND status = done order by created ASC
3. Add Group By Transformation
   • Sprint Name | Group By
   • Story Point Estimate | Calculate | Total
4. Select the Bar Gauge Visualization

Question: How do I show what was Completed vs Estimated in a Sprint?

1. Add a Query
   • Select Fields: Sprint Name, Sprint Start Date, Story point estimate
   • Add JQL Filter: project = 'Your Project' AND type != epic
2. Add a second Query
   • Select Fields: Sprint Name, Sprint Start Date, Story point estimate
   • Add JQL Filter: project = 'Your Project' AND type != epic AND status = done
3. Add Group By Transformation
   • Sprint Name | Group By
   • Sprint Start Date | Group By
   • Story point estimate | Calculate | Total
4. Select Graph visualization

Question: What is the Average time to complete issues in my project?

1. Add a Query
   • Select Fields: Created, Status Category Changed
   • Add JQL Filter: project = 'Your Project' AND type != epic AND status = done
2. Add Transformation: Add field from calculation
   • Mode = Reduce Row
   • Calculation = Difference
3. Add Transformation: Add field from calculation
   • Mode = Binary Operation
   • Operation = Difference / 86000000 (1000 * 3600 * 24) ...to get days
   • Alias = Days
4. Add Transformation: Organize fields
   • Hide Difference field
5. Add Transformation: Filter data by values
   • Filter Type = Include
   • Conditions = Match any
     • Field = Days | Match = Is Greater | Value = 1
6. Add Transformation: Reduce
   • Mode = Series to Rows
   • Calculations = mean
7. Select Visualization: Stat

Template Variables

You can define variables on your dashboards and reference them in JQL expressions.

For example, you can create a project status dashboard and choose between projects, or an epic status dashboard and choose different epics, or a task status dashboard and choose different assignees.

To get a dynamic list of Projects, Epics, Assignees, etc to choose from, create a Query type variable. Query type variables use JQL to query issues and return Projects, Epics, Assignees or anything related to issues.

Example: Create an Assignee variable to get the status of issues by Assignee.

1. Add a variable of type Query called assignee
2. Select Field: Assignee
3. Add JQL Filter (optional): project = 'your project'
4. Click the Run button to see the list of Assignees at the bottom.
5. Click Update to add the variable to the Dashboard.
6. Add drop down appears on your dashboard with a list of assignees.
7. Add a panel to the Dashboard, and edit the JQL to filter using your new variable. assignee = $assignee
8. Now when choosing from the drop down, you only see issues assigned to that user.

Multi-value variables allow selecting multiple options and can be used as part of the IN clause. assignee IN ($assignee)

Ad Hoc Filters

Ad Hoc filters are global filters. When added to your Dashboard, the values selected are automatically applied as filters to the JQL on all of the panels on our dashboard.

Macros

Macros are variables that reference the Dashboard time window so you can filter issues only within the range of the Dashboard window.

There are 2 macros: $__timeFrom and $__timeTo.

Example: JQL to filter issues created within the Dasbboard time window. createdDate >= $__timeFrom AND createdDate <= $__timeTo

Time Series

To show time series data, choose a Date field along with a numeric field, then switch to the Graph visualization.

For example: Sprint Start Date, Story point estimate

The above example, on its own, is not very useful. The numeric field can be (and will most likely be) calculated from Transformations.

Using the Group By Transformation would allow grouping by Sprint Start Date and summarizing the Story point estimate allowing a visualization of Story Points over time per Sprint.

Alerting

Alerting allows you to set up notifications based on thresholds you define. For example, you may want to receive a notification if a Project is not on track or past due, or if Sprint estimates are outside the average velocity, or a change was made that will impact a team's ability to deliver on time.