Jira dashboards can’t chart numeric custom fields across projects and how I handle it
I needed to show quality metrics that live in numeric custom fields on a Jira dashboard. The requirement was straightforward on paper: chart these numbers across multiple projects and compare them by project, issue type, or a default related issue field.
The blocker showed up quickly. Standard Jira dashboard gadgets don’t allow numeric custom fields to be used as X or Y axis values. Even the Two Dimensional Filter Statistics gadget, which looks like the obvious choice, only supports categorical fields. That meant no way to directly visualize numeric metrics without manual workarounds.
In practice, this became a reporting tax. Every new dashboard or project required rethinking the same limitation, exporting data, or simplifying the question being asked. As reporting needs scaled across projects, the lack of reuse and consistency became the real problem.
Jira dashboards are designed around predefined gadget behaviors. Axis configuration and aggregation logic are fixed inside each gadget, and numeric custom fields aren’t treated as first-class dimensions for charting.
Even Atlassian Analytics or saved filters don’t fully solve this. The logic still lives too close to the project or gadget level, which makes cross-project reuse difficult. Once you need numeric fields to behave as true measures (aggregated, compared, and reused), the native model starts to feel rigid rather than flexible.
A Practical Approach That Worked
What worked was changing where the logic lives. Instead of trying to force Jira gadgets to behave differently, the aggregation and axis logic was moved into a reporting layer built specifically for this kind of analysis.
Using Visionade, numeric custom fields are indexed at the data source level and treated as aggregatable values. The key idea is that the report defines how numbers are calculated and displayed, not the dashboard gadget. Jira becomes the data provider, while the reporting layer handles structure and reuse.
This works because numeric fields are stored as indexed dimensions in the data source and then applied as Values in reusable Data Sets. Once defined there, they can act as true Y-axis inputs across any chart, regardless of Jira’s native limitations.
Setup Approach
Start by selecting the Jira data source in Visionade and including the required numeric custom fields as dimensions. You can use the default Jira dimensions provided, or create custom dimensions from any of your available fields. In this example, I’ll create a custom dimension for ‘Story Point’ - a numeric field.
Index those fields so their values are available for aggregation across projects.
Create a Data Set with a cross-project JQL filter covering all projects where the quality metrics exist.
Build a report from that Data Set, drag the numeric custom field into the Values area and apply an aggregation such as Average, Sum, or Max.
Choose a Column, Bar, or Line chart so the aggregated numeric field is rendered on the axis.
Add the saved report to a Jira dashboard using the Visionade Report gadget.
Result
After setting this up, numeric quality metrics could be charted cleanly across projects without custom exports or per-dashboard hacks. The same Data Set and aggregation logic could be reused as reporting needs evolved.
The main takeaway is that this isn’t really a charting problem — it’s a modeling problem. Once numeric fields are treated as aggregatable measures at the reporting layer, the dashboard limitations largely disappear. Hope this helps others who run into the same wall. I’d be interested to hear how others have approached numeric custom field reporting in Jira.
I’m from the Visionade team, and this content was written with the assistance of AI. I’d be genuinely interested to hear how others approach numeric reporting in Jira - have you found alternative or more flexible ways to model and reuse these metrics?
If you’d like to explore this approach further, you’re welcome to try Visionade - we hope it provides a useful and positive experience: Visionade: Reports, Dashboards, Graphs, and Charts for Jira