Track Time or Work Logged During each Workflow Step / Status

Question

I am using  a custom workflow, that is specific to our business process. For reporting and historical purposes, I am looking to keep track of the amount of time each issue spends in a given step of the workflow. For the scope of our workflow, each step corresponds to its own status. IE. the "development" step is linked to the "development" status. I largely use the words step and status interchangably.

I am running JIRA 4.4 and have installed JIRA Suite Utilities plugin. This provides a transition tab for each issue. It tracks the total time spent in each step, as well as the number of times each transition is executed. While this is useful, it does not provide the full functionality that we need. Our business process allows for transitions back to a prior step; therefore, a step may be encounted twice, or infinite number of times. For this reason, I would like to have the ability to track the time in each iteration of a particular step.

IE. If "step 3" was encountered 4 times, I would like 4 different time logs or recorded duration for this.

Another approach to this situation that we have toyed with is to use the "Log Work" feature. If it would be possible to log work specific to a particular step that would suffice as well. As far as I know, it is not possible, or difficult, to alter the log work screen. If it is possible to log work to a specific step, it could be implemented as part of the transition screen and allow us to track to time spent in each iteration of the step.

If anyone has any insight as to how I can track, and ideally report on, the data that I am looking for please point me in the right direction.

Xavier Morera1 · Answer

Hi. This may not be the ultimate solution but it is a workaround that could be implemented in 5 minutes:

- Download this plugin https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.marketingquantum.quantum

- Use the normal "Log Work" feature

- When entering the description just use a keyword at the beginning for sorting, i.e. "Step 1:"

- When you get the report using the plugin, just sort by issue first and step second. Easy solution that provides you with what you need with just a bit of discipline.

Viðar Svansson · Answer

Hi Josh,

You might be able to achive what you want with Tempo Timesheets but it would maybe not be as automatic as you would like.

You could set up a Dynamic Dropdown Worklog Attribute to the Log Work screen. The dropdown could be populated by a REST service that returns the available workflow state for the issue and even setting current state as the selected value. This might require you to build a small JIRA plugin that exposes the REST endpoint.

Unfortunately the Tempo Log Work screen is not yet available on an issue transition so it requires some training.

Cheers,
Viðar

Andreas K. · Answer

Hi Josh,
How do you consume the information today? Are you simply using the Jira UI to look at the data or are you using some kind of reporting?

I am not sure if this replies to your answer, but my approach in the past for this scenario was to use simply SQL and tap into the database. Jira keeps a history of all the status changes and when they occur. So via SQL it is possible to get to what you want. To expand a bit, I use MS SQL Server Express Edition with Advanced Services (Free Edition) to do the querying and the reporting.

But maybe there are other solutions available that I do not know of :-)
Cheers!