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Exporting Jira issues to Excel

From users' point of view, the Better Excel Exporter for Jira Data Center app is very simple to use.

All you have to do is clicking certain items in the Export drop-down menu to get your Excel spreadsheets. Those can either be generated:

  • from a single issue
  • from the issues in the Issue Navigator (saved filters, JQL queries, searches, versions, sprints and all other Jira features that are based on the JQL query language)
  • from the issues in a Jira Software board (columns)
  • from the issues in a Jira Software backlog (sprints)
  • from the issues in a Jira Service Management queue
  • from the issues in a Tempo timesheet

After the Excel spreadsheet is downloaded to your computer, open the file in Excel to view it, to modify it, and to continue your interactive analysis. Open Office, Libre Office, Google Spreadsheets and Calc are supported, as well.

Exporting a single issue to Excel

Click one of the items in the Export drop-down menu in the Issue Details screen to get your Excel spreadsheet.

Please note that there are multiple items available in the Export drop-down menu, because the app allows using any number of templates to generate Excel spreadsheets. You can, for instance, use one template to report on worklogs per developer and project and another to report on workflow transition durations and SLA statistics per issue type.

Exporting the issues from the Issue Navigator to Excel

Similarly to the previous, click one of the items in the Export drop-down menu in the Issue Navigator screen. There can be multiple Excel export options available there, as written in the previous section.

Managing Excel export types

The app enables using any number of so-called views (export types), each relying on a different Excel template and different template logic. You can use one view to analyze worklogs, another to analyze workflow transitions, and a third one to analyze "Created vs. Resolved" statistics, for example.

Each view:

  • has its name, which appears in the Export drop-down menu.
  • has a short description, to explain the purpose of this export type.
  • can appear in any combination of these contexts (screens): Single Issue View, Issue Navigator, Dashboard, Jira Software Board, Jira Software Backlog, Jira Service Management Queue and Tempo Timesheet.
  • renders one particular Excel template file. (Template files can be reused by multiple export types. For example, a Monthly SLA Report and a Weekly SLA Report can render the same Excel template, with some differences in the template logic.")
  • can be optionally restricted to certain groups, users or issues (specified by JQL).

Views are ordered. Their order can be defined right in the Excel Views list. The same order will also be reflected in the Export drop-down menu, allowing the administrators to define a logical order for the items.

As written above, views render their output from Excel templates. These are actual Excel files, with some special markup (placeholder texts) in the cells. Templates are created with Microsoft Excel, making it very easy to create and modify reports for anyone with some basic experience in Microsoft Excel.

Each Excel template:

  • has its name (filename).
  • has a short description.
  • is stored in the Jira database. (Administrators can download, edit and upload these files any time.)

Managing Excel views

Go to Jira Administration → Add-ons → Excel Views.

You can easily create, edit, delete or reorder export types (views) in this screen. Please note that you can use the "edit" function also to rename or hide views.

Restoring the default Excel views

In the following exceptional cases, you may want to restore the default views:

  1. You broke or deleted some views, or created new ones that are not needed any longer, and now want to start over from a clear state (i.e. the factory-default settings).
  2. You never customized the views, and instead of rigorously performing the upgrade steps at app version updates (documented in the Version History), you want to take a shorter path. Restoring guarantees that you will get the views that are 100% consistent with your current app version. Not more, not less.

Use this feature carefully, as there is no undo. At the same time, if something went wrong: views are saved to the regular Jira back-ups, so it gives you safety.

You can reset the default views by opening this URL in your browser: 

http://localhost:8086/secure/reset-xls-views.jspa?santa

Just replace the localhost:8086 part to match your Jira base URL. Note: santa is a request parameter that reduces the risk of accidentally calling this URL. (Fun fact: we developed this feature on 6 Dec some years ago.)

After the successful restore, you will be redirected to the list of the Excel views.

Managing Excel templates

The final Excel spreadsheets are rendered from template files, optionally running Groovy scripts. These files, used by the rendering process, are together called "resources".

Go to Jira Administration → Add-ons → Excel Templates to manage resources.

You can easily upload or delete Excel template files in this screen. To edit a template file, you have to download the file you wanted to update, edit it in Excel, and then upload the modified version. If there is already a resource with that file name existing, then it will be updated by the uploaded file. Otherwise there will be a new resource created.

You can also create or edit Groovy scripts in this screen, using the web based code editor. To edit a script, just click on its name, make the necessary modifications and save your work.

If you make major changes to Excel templates, we strongly suggest activating the so-called devmode that allows you to work much faster.

Restoring the default resources (Excel templates and Groovy scripts)

Similarly to restoring the default views, you can also restore the default resources. The same applies: use it in exceptional situations and use it carefully.

You can reset the resources by opening this URL in your browser: 

http://localhost:8086/secure/reset-xls-resources.jspa?santa

Just replace the localhost:8086 part to match your Jira base URL.

After the successful restore, you will be redirected to the list of the Excel resources.

Next step

Next step: customizing your Jira Excel templates.

Questions?

Ask us any time.