Confluence Database of Jira Issues versus Issue Query

Stephen Gordinier

My goal is to create a quick dashboard of a subset of Jira Cloud issues work items on a Confluence Cloud site. I am very familiar with inserting an issue query into a page to produce a nice table, et cetera, and it certainly gets the job done.

I've been playing with the new Database feature, and have noticed it has the ability to link to Jira and grab a set of work items based on a JQL query as well. Given the choice, I prefer the way the Database presents the data and allows for column reorganization, etc., to the built-in query macro.

• For what I am trying to do (just displaying work items that satisfy a query), is there a functional difference between the two approaches?
• I can't find a way to update/edit the JQL query used to populate a database. Can that be done?
• Is the list of items in the database completely static (as far as what items are in it) once initially created? I understand that if an object that's already in the database is updated on the Jira side, the database will refresh to reflect that.

Tomislav Tobijas

Hi @Stephen Gordinier ,

I haven't been playing much with DBs and importing/linking items from Jira, but I believe that from Database, you cannot update field values, while if you're using Jira work item macro, you can (for some fields).

Related to the second bullet, you could 'reimport' items if you navigate to More actions > Templates and import. From there, you can only rewrite the whole database (not exactly edit the initial JQL that you've used).
Note that there's a related open feature suggestion: CONFCLOUD-78742: Jira issues are not updated dynamically in the confluence databases. 

And lastly, yes - it's all 'static'. There's also a feature suggestion related to the ability to edit Jira fields via database: CONFCLOUD-79351: Enable editing values for Jira fields directly from Confluence Databases 

Cheers,
Tobi