How do i create an executive view in Jira for a sub-section of stories under an epic?

[justinlynn]

Jira question:

My director has an Excel spreadsheet with a row for each rollout of an Epic.

We don't want to use an excel spreadsheet for stuff already in Jira.

How does Jira show an executive view of stories in sub-sections of an epic?

If i use labels to categorize the epic, the swimlane functionality does not support automatically filtering by different labels.  I would have to manually enter each new label in the epic.

Thoughts?

[Jack Brickey · Accepted solution]

Consider putting together a dashboard. Meet with your executive to discuss what they would like to see. Just get some basic ideas and then put a prototype dashboard together. setup a review with him or her to discuss what works and what doesn't and then make necessary changes.

[justinlynn]

Thanks for responding Jack.  That's good advice in general.  Is this the right forum for developers/ technical advice?

[Jack Brickey]

I don't understand your question and how it is relevant to your initial question and my response. With that said...

The Community is a very good place for questions about Atlassian products and partner products. There are various Community collections where are you can target your questions. For example if you have questions associated with developing products you might consider https://community.developer.atlassian.com 

[justinlynn]

Thanks Jack!

[Kirk Gould]

• There is a way to "group" Jira Stories together by Epic in a Jira Filter or Confluence Report, and thankfully, the information is included in the Story itself.  The "Epic Link" field is there in almost every Jira Project Type, so if you write a JQL that is something like:

Project in ("Project A","Project B","Project C") and issuetype = Story order by "Epic Link"

You will have all your Stories grouped by Epic and you can display whichever fields you want.

• A more fancy, but limited way is to use Jira Planner/Portfolio mentioned in a prior answer.
• I don't know whether the Advanced Roadmap feature can be used for items in more than one Jira Project, but the basic method mentioned first of displaying and sorting by "Epic Link" is an easy, free, and widely useful method. (Server, Data Center, or Cloud)

[Paul A Wright]

Confluence is  a great way to capture data from JSD and Jira, I often forget that but use it quite a lot!
Thanks for the reminder on that element @Kirk Gould 

I love the way you can query both and present as a combined view.

Quite versatile in that sense!

[Dave Rosenlund _Trundl_]

Hi, @justinlynn. In my experience, the most frequently used Jira add-ons for slicing and dicing and visualizing Jira issues the way you'd like on Jira cloud standard edition are:

• Structure for Jira
  
  
• BigPicture

And there are newcomers, like JXL, mentioned above. 

Friendly advice: Get comfortable with your Atlassian Marketplace search skills (if you aren't already there).  Jira, like many wildly popular software platforms, has a rich application marketplace to draw upon. 

E.g., https://marketplace.atlassian.com/addons/app/jira/top-selling?hosting=cloud&moreFilters=cloudFortified&query=visualize

Ultimately, you can do pretty much anything you'd like with Jira — but sometimes you may need an add-on or two to get there.

-dave 

P.S.  Full disclosure — I work for the company that makes Structure.

[Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira]

Hi @justinlynn

if you're open to solutions from the Atlassian Marketplace, you might find JXL for Jira useful. It's a full-fledged table/spreadsheet view for your issues that comes with full support for issue hierarchies, quick filtering and sorting, and many other capabilities that you're familiar with from Excel or Google Sheets - except that it runs directly in Jira. 

This is how the issue hierarchy looks in action:

You could then e.g. sort your issues by their labels and therefore "group" the stories below their epics. 

JXL will also very soon - as in, in the next one or two weeks - support "swimlane"-like grouping - e.g., by labels, status, or any other issue field. This grouping will work nicely with hierarchies, meaning that you can create swimlanes of stories below their epics. More info at https://jxl.app. (Disclaimer: I work on JXL :))

Hope this helps,

Hannes

[Paul A Wright]

My gut feel is to use Jira Planner and create a gantt view or board view that meets the requirements.

(Previously called Portfolio)

I believe it's now included with DC and Cloud.

Very intuitive and you can export the views into a report.

[Marc - Devoteam]

Hi @justinlynn

The board you can also base you swim lanes on Epic, this would not require you to add a label.

It shows all you Epics as a swim lane and int the swim lane you will see all issues related to the epic.

Or

If you are on Jira cloud you can enable the roadmap view on you kanban or sprint board.

This will only work if the work you want to show is confined into 1 project.

Cheers,

Marc

[justinlynn]

Thanks for responding Marc.  So just to confirm, there is no way to use JQL to sort swimlanes on labels automatically right? I was able to set up a board filtered by only the epic I wanted to see.  I just need to be able to auto filter swimlanes by different label.  Hmmm

FYI, creating a different epic for each is not going to work for my leadership.  We have been using Jira for awhile and everything is already setup by Epic.

[Marc - Devoteam]

Hi @justinlynn

Correct. That would require you to set a label on an Epic first

[Kirk Gould]

You can try to set up labels for your Stories, then use Queries in your Jira Dashboard for Swimlanes and try to use a combo of Epic Link and Label for individual Swimlanes.

[Vishal Biyani]

Are you on Jira cloud premium version? if so, you can try looking at Advanced Roadmaps

Otherwise, there is a plugin available in excel that can download data from Jira and you can create dashboards. The data source remains Jira so you don't have to manually populate the data.

[justinlynn]

We are not on cloud premium.

The goal is to use Jira; not Excel.

Thanks for responding.

[Tanya L Christensen]

Jira Software Data Center includes Advanced Roadmaps.  It will give you exactly what you are looking for.

[Tanya L Christensen]

https://www.atlassian.com/blog/jira-software/jira-data-center-includes-advanced-roadmaps