Jira Dashboards

I recently gave a presentation on how to creating and managing Jira dashboards to a group of tech writers. This post recounts the topics and points I presented which include creating a dashboard from scratch, copying existing dashboards, modifying the layout, adding widgets and gadgets, and saving filters.

Creating a dashboard from scratch

When creating a new dashboard in Jira, you'll want to follow a few guidelines to make your dashboard useful:

• Give it a good descriptive name. I tend to give my boards a name based on it's function. For example, if I need to keep an eye on all projects assigned to me that are open and are of critical importance, I'll called it something like "Critically assigned to me" (little humor there).
• While not necessary, I enter a good description as to the purpose of this dashboard. Adding a description can definitely help future-proof your dashboard as most tech writers I know who religiously use Jira tend to have multiple dashboards.
• You can start from a blank dashboard or use one other existing dashboards available to you. While it may be tempting to template off an existing dashboard, you may end up doing a lot of customization and removal of unnecessary widgets to get exactly what you want. 
• Sharing is important. By default, the dashboard you create is restricted to you (by default). You can keep the dashboard all to yourself or can share it with everyone or whomever you like. If you are working with a team or other needs access to your dashboard, you will need to enable sharing with others.

Note: sharing a dashboard with everyone does not mean including non-employee users. That is a completely different setting that is tied to Jira projects. Sharing grants access to everyone who has access to your Jira instance.

Copying existing dashboards

If you decide to go the route of copying an existing dashboard, you will need to keep the following information in mind when going this route:

• You can copy available (shared) dashboards as one of your own. You are creating an original instance of the existing dashboard with all of it's widgets and settings as is. None of these widgets or settings are tied back to the original dashboard.
• Any changes you make to your copy of the dashboard doesn't affect the original. There's no tie-backs or dynamic linking or anything like that to these dashboards.
• Give the dashboard a good descriptive name. I urge you not to call it "Copy of <such and such> dashboard" (as noted above).
• Add a good description (as noted above).
• Decide if this dashboard will be shared or not. This decision will totally be up to you (and your team) depending on your needs with this cloned dashboard.

Layouts

Modifying the layout of a dashboard is simple as drag and drop if you wish to re-arrange the widget's positioning.

• This is totally up to your needs for your dashboard. If you have just one big widget, then I'd go with the single panel layout. Otherwise, I would recommend the equal two panel layout to help minimize page scrolling. Some of the widgets available in Jira can get pretty unwieldily if a single panel layout while others seem crowded in a two or three panel layout.
• Personal note: I don't recommend the three panel layout. Depending on which widgets one uses, this layout tends to squish the content to an unfriendly reading experience. But that also depending on how big your monitor is and what resolution is available. On my little Macbook, if find that two panel layouts work very well.

Adding gadgets

Adding new gadgets and widgets can be done via edit mode of the dashboard. Go to Tools and click the Edit Dashboard Add Gadget button. From here, you add and/or remove gadgets and widgets and adjust the layout as you see fit.

Jira comes packed with tons of great and useful widgets. Plus, you have the ability (though not necessary the capability) to add or purchase more gadgets.

Here are some of my recommendations for building a useful and informative dashboard. These gadget recommendations are for active projects. There is a whole different mindset on dashboard for reporting on project progress and project reviews. The following list is geared toward tech writers who need to keep a tab on project activity, ticket resolution, custom filters, and date-based events:

• Activity Stream: Depending on how your Atlasssian platform is set up, this gadget can report on both Confluence and Jira activities (and any other connected Atlassian product), apply filters to the stream, and so on. I find this widget useful when I've been out of the loop for a day or three and need to catch up on what my team has been up to while I was offline.
• Assigned to me: the name kinda says it all. This widget will list all tickets assigned to logged in user. Note that is lists tickets to the logged in user. Even though this may appear on your dashboard, it will not show tickets assigned to if someone else is looking at your dashboard.
• Created vs. Resolved chart: this gadget is useful only if your team likes to see that kind of reporting over a period of time for a particular project or filter.
• Favorite Filters: if you have a collection of filters, this is a handy "bookmarking" tool to keep track of them.
• Filter Results: this gadget is the bread and butter of my dashboards. Its highly customizable and best of all, it takes whatever filter you create for it. For a more informative guide on how to create and save a filter, see Atlassian's guide called Saving your search as a filter.
• Heat Map: Heat maps are fun and informative to look at but lose their functionality when you have too many matching issues.
• Jira Issues Calendar: Good calendar view of what tickets were created and/or updated in a simple icon (tick) display.

Creating filters

Creating a filter is as simple as searching in Jira. After you've entered in all the variables you wish to search against and the issues are displayed, you can save the search results by clicking the Save As button.

• Give this filter a good descriptive name as you'll want to use it again and again.
• I recommend a functional name (as in what you searched against).
• Avoid using dates in the name unless the search is time constrained.

For example, if I need to save a search against a members of my team (doc-team), limited to a particular project (Docs), and the priority is "high", I would name the saved filter as "High priority in Docs for doc-team".

Summary

While this is a far cry from a complete guide on how to set up a Jira Dashboard, I believe it is a good start and I will likely expand on this post in the near future. In this post, we looked at how to create a dashboard (from scratch or by copying and modifying an existing one), customizing the layout to suit your needs, adding widgets and gadgets, and how to save a Jira search as a filter.