How to Create a Weekly Update Digest/Dashboard in Jira?

[jason.roberts]

I am migrating my team's project work into Jira Initiatives & Epics. The team are currently updating their work in Jira as well as summarizing those same updates weekly into a shared document for leadership consumption. This is very inefficient. I need a method to regularly retrieve and present the following data elements from Jira and present in a Dashboard or a send a digest email to designated recipients:

• Issue Key for a given filtered list of Initiatives, Epics, Stories or Work Items
• Description
• Assignee
• Priority
• Work log - only the most recent from the past 1-14 days
• Comments - only the most recent from the past 1-14 days

I tried building a Filter and an Activity Stream Gadget, but neither of those were able to accomplish this. Are there other tools / solutions I should try?

[Marc -Devoteam- · Accepted solution]

Hi @jason.roberts 

This is not really an option in Jira, as Jira shows the live state of the information, not based on historic storage.

You could look at apps that extend dashboard reporting options.

Or If you need this kind of mandatory reporting, you should look to export the information on a scheduled basis and store the information and use a BI tool to be able to use this information for historical reporting.

[Alexey Pavlenko _App Developer_]

Hi @jason.roberts ,

I've been exactly in the same boat. I used my app for that - Multi-team Scrum Metrics & Retrospectives.

You can select any period (active sprints supported), any metric (constructed via JQL) and any column to present.

Best regards,
Alexey

[Rahul_RVS]

Hi @jason.roberts 

Welcome to the community !!

If you would be interested in a mktplace app, try out the one we have developed.

Worklogs Time Tracking in Jira & Timesheets

The app helps to view the time spent by your team members in a standard report format, and you can also add other worklogs comments in the report as shown below.

With this add-on, you can easily -

• Create time reports in real time by grouping & categorizing data with aggregation
• Prepare your reports based on Project/Sprint/Issue Type/Assignees and various other filters
• Group your data to build more meaningful reports
• CSV Export
• Create Dashboard gadget
• Enter Time Spent for multiple issues from Time sheet screen. With Calendar view and Board view

Disclaimer : I am part of the dev team

[Anton from JetHeads_io]

Hey @jason.roberts!

Native Jira filters and gadgets don't handle worklog and comment filtering by date range well — they either show everything or nothing useful for digest-style reporting.

For the worklog part, JetTime (a third-party Jira app) can help — you can generate timesheet reports filtered by date range (e.g., last 7 or 14 days) showing Issue Key, Assignee, and all worklogs from that period. You can group by user or project and export as PDF or Excel for leadership.

For recent comments, you'd still need a separate solution, unfortunately.

JetTime features:

• Time tracking & timesheets with improved Log Work UI and timers
• Reports filtered by date range, user, or project
• Cost tracking with custom financial fields
• Custom metrics (mileage, materials, activity types, etc.)
• PDF & Excel export for reports
• Runs fully on Atlassian infrastructure, so data stays inside Atlassian Cloud

👉 JetTime on the Atlassian Marketplace
— Anton, JetTime founder

[Max Mykhailenko]

Hi Jason,

I would separate this into two problems:

1. Current state reporting: issue key, description, assignee, priority, and status.
2. Recent evidence: worklogs and comments from the last 1-14 days.

Native Jira dashboards are better at the first problem than the second. A saved filter plus the Filter Results gadget can show the current issue fields, but recent worklogs and recent comments are activity/history data. They usually do not roll up cleanly into an initiative/epic weekly digest without automation, export, BI, or a Marketplace app.

For leadership consumption, I would also be careful not to expose raw activity as the report. The useful weekly question is usually:

• What moved?
• What changed?
• What looks risky?
• What needs replanning?

If your team is moving work into Initiatives and Epics, I would structure the digest around the Initiative/Epic first, then use recent worklogs and comments as supporting evidence underneath each item. That keeps leadership focused on delivery movement instead of a long activity stream.

Disclosure: I am building Focus Flow, a Jira Marketplace app focused on weekly epic execution review. It is not a generic email digest tool, but this workflow is close to the reason we built an epic review screen: planned dates, worklog evidence, and issue drill-down in one place before writing the leadership update.

One question that may clarify the right solution: does leadership need to read the raw worklog/comment rows, or do they mainly need a defensible summary per Initiative/Epic with evidence available if challenged?

[Natalia_Kovalchuk_SaaSJet_]

Hi @jason_roberts!

As a workaround, you can try to use Issue History for Jira (Work Item History) app provided by SaaSJet team. 

In your case, it helps solve exactly the limitation you’ve run into with Activity Stream.

In the app, you can use the filters (by space, JQL, etc.), set the needed date range (e.g., Last 14 days), add all the required fields (like Priority, Status, Log Work, etc.) using the Column section and receive such a report: 

In the app, you can use also a JQL filter like:  parent = EPIC-KEY that will show all tasks related to the specific Epic.

Once configured, you can save the view and reuse it, for example, for weekly reporting. There’s also an option to share or export the report (e.g., Excel) and send it to stakeholders.

Hope it wil be useful!

[Danut M _StonikByte_]

Hi @jason.roberts,

Welcome to the Atlassian Community.

Jira’s native dashboard gadgets are not able to provide this level of detail. You could try the Filter Results gadget to display a list of issues updated in the last 14 days, including fields such as Key, Summary, Description, Assignee, and Priority. However, you won’t be able to display worklogs or comments, and the data cannot be grouped by epic or initiative.

If you’re open to using a plugin from the Atlassian Marketplace, I would recommend trying the Worklog Reports & Timesheets gadget offered by our Great Gadgets app.

This gadget allows you to create all kind of statistics based on work logs from a specified time period (such as past 1-14 days), it can group data by epics or initiatives and can display worklogs. It works like pivot tables from Excel, allowing you to create complex stats, heatmaps or charts of various types. 

Here is an example for your user case, with a detailed view:

However, this gadget will not display the comments, only the worklogs.

You can also use it for more aggregated stats based on work-logs from past time intervals, like in these examples:

The app offers many other useful gadgets that can be useful for creating a weekly digest dashboard.

Hope this helps. if you have questions or need help with the configuration of our gadgets, feel free to contact us at support@stonikbyte.com.

Danut

[Mariia_Domska_SaaSJet]

Hi, @jason.roberts 

If you are interested in trying a third-party app, I recommend giving AI Apps Builder a try. My team works on this app.

AI Apps Builder is an AI tool for Jira Cloud. It lets you create a custom dashboard just by entering a simple prompt. You’ll get 100 free credits to start, which is enough to experiment and build a few Jira apps.

Here you can see how AI Apps Builder works:

Instantly Generate Team Performance Reports with AI Tools 📊 - Watch Video

I hope that AI Apps Builder can meet your expectations. 

If you give it a try, please let us know what you like best and if there’s anything you think is missing.