Introduction
This is part 2 of the Best Practices in Jira – Dashboard Reporting which focuses more on the practical aspect. By using examples with Jira reporting gadgets, we hope to illustrate some of the points covered in the previous blog post.
The scenario is we have a Jira Software project for each Jira/Confluence app we developed to track the features/bugs/tasks. In addition, we also have a Jira Service Desk project for supporting end users.
For each Jira Sofware project, we defined 2 dashboards:
- Overall Dashboard – for high level view
- Working Dashboard – for operational view
Overall Dashboards
The Overall Dashboard is for the product owner to have an overall picture and facilitate roadmap planning. It has more charting gadgets to present high level view.
We also use the free Links Menu Gadget to consolidate all the related links on the dashboard. Team members can access the Confluence space and Bitbucket source code repository for the project from the dashboard. This facilitates new team members to get up to speed faster. You can also use it to link to the various Jira Service Desk reports.
Working Dashboards
The working dashboard is for the developers with to know the tasks they have to work to deliver the upcoming release. It contains more lists and table gadgets to show the detailed view. We also included a countdown gadget to show the time remaining to the next release.
In addition, we used Filters Menu gadget to replace the Favourite Filters Gadgets to group the JQL filters.
Support Dashboard
For the Support Dashboard, we are using a shared dashboard instead of creating 1 dashboard for each project.
By using Canned Search Gadget, users need not to write complicated JQL queries or composing their search from the Issue Navigator. They can just select the available options or enter the keywords to perform contextual searches.
A support agent can quickly find the tickets reported by a user on the phone by entering the name and optional keywords using the Canned Search Gadget.
Support Wallboard
We used traffic light colours to denote the criticality of the gadget as well to segment the dashboard. For example: Counter Board gadget (to track breached SLA) is red so that it brings attention to the viewers. The secondary information uses a subtle colour like grey.
The more important information are usually positioned at the top whereas supplementary information are arranged below.
Project View
We used Dashboard Folders app to group the dashboards in a hierarchical manner. This enable users
- to discover the dashboards available without having to find and add the dashboards one by one
- to navigate to their dashboards from anywhere in Jira
With the use of aliases, the menu entries are less cluttered without having to display their full name. It is configurable to display relevant projects only to authorised users.
Project Sidebar
We also added the dashboard links to the project shortcuts so that users can navigate to the dashboard.
It is also possible to search issues within the project using the canned search gadget.
If you like this article, you might be interested to check out our best practices series
