How to create a GOOD Jira Dashboard: the ultimate guide for 2025

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In this guide, we’ll cover:

1. What Jira dashboards are and why they matter

2. Jira dashboards vs. Jira reports

3. Step-by-step guide to creating dashboards

4. Different types of Jira dashboards

5. How to make a good and a bad dashboard

6. How to share dashboards

7. How Planyway for Jira can level up your workflow

What are Jira Dashboards and why are they important?

Jira dashboards are centralized workspaces that display key information about your projects, tasks, and team performance. They allow you to:

• Monitor progress in real-time

• Identify blockers and bottlenecks

• Prioritize tasks effectively

• Share updates with stakeholders

Whether you're a project manager, developer, or team lead, a well-structured dashboard can streamline your workflow and improve decision-making.

Dashboards vs. Reports

There are two main ways to handle reporting in Jira.

1. Project Report
This method allows you to focus on a specific project. Navigate to an individual project, open the board, click on Reports, and select the report you need from the available options. Each report is generated individually and provides a static snapshot of your data at the time it is created.

2. Dashboard
Dashboard reporting provides a broader perspective. You can compile multiple reports from various projects onto a single screen, offering a comprehensive overview of all your work. In Jira, the reports you add to a dashboard are known as gadgets.

Once your Jira dashboard is set up, it works automatically—no manual updates are required. Each time you reload the dashboard, the gadgets update with the latest data. You can even configure them to refresh at regular intervals, ensuring the information stays current. This makes dashboard reporting significantly faster and more efficient compared to project reporting.

While project reports are ideal for capturing a fixed snapshot of data, dashboards deliver a dynamic, near-real-time view, making them an essential tool for ongoing monitoring and decision-making.

How to Create a Jira Dashboard

1. Navigate to Dashboards

Go to the Jira main menu and click on Dashboards > Create Dashboard.

2. Set Up Your Dashboard

• Name: Choose a clear, descriptive name.

• Description: Add a brief explanation of the dashboard’s purpose.

• Permissions: Decide who can view and edit the dashboard.

3. Add Gadgets

• Click on Add Gadget and browse the available options.

4. Customize Layout

• Update the layout of the dashboard by selecting Change layout in the top-right.

• Drag and drop gadgets to organize information.

5. Save and Share

• Save your dashboard and share it with team members to foster collaboration.

Different types of Jira dashboards you can make

Here are some of the most common types of Jira dashboards you can create:

1. Team Progress Dashboards

• Purpose: Monitor team performance and progress toward goals.

• Key Gadgets:

  • Sprint Health Gadget: Tracks sprint progress, including completed, in-progress, and remaining tasks.

  • Workload Pie Chart: Displays task allocation across team members.

2. Project Overview Dashboards

• Purpose: Provide a high-level summary of project status, timelines, and risks.

• Key Gadgets:

  • Average Time in Status: Displays the average number of days resolved issues have spent in status.

  • Roadmap Gadget: Visualizes key milestones and deliverables on a timeline.

  • Two-Dimensional Filter Statistics: Analyzes issues by criteria like priority and assignee.

3. Issue Tracking Dashboards

• Purpose: Focus on monitoring and managing issues across a project or multiple projects.

• Key Gadgets:

  • Created vs. Resolved Chart: Tracks how many issues are being created and resolved over time.

  • Assigned to Me Gadget: Displays issues assigned to the logged-in user.

  • Average Age Chart: Highlights how long issues have been open, helping to identify bottlenecks.

How Planyway Enhances Your Jira Dashboards

If you’re looking for more visibility across Jira projects, explore Planyway for Jira. With Planyway, you can:

• Visualize tasks, sprints, and deadlines on a Gantt-style timeline.

• Track resource allocation across teams.

• Monitor project progress across multiple projects.

How to Share a Jira Dashboard

Jira offers several options for sharing dashboards and filters:

1. Private (Default Option):

   • Who Can Access: Only the dashboard owner.

   • Use Case: Ideal for personal dashboards or those not yet ready for team sharing.

2. Group:

   • Who Can Access: Members of a specific group.

   • Important Notes:

     • On Jira Cloud, you can only share dashboards and filters with groups you belong to.

   • Use Case: Great for sharing dashboards with a specific team or department.

3. Public:

   • Who Can Access: Anyone on the internet.

   • Important Notes:

     • Anonymous users can only view the underlying issues if the associated projects also allow public access in their permission schemes.

   • Use Case: Best for dashboards intended for external stakeholders or public reporting.

4. My Organization (Jira Cloud Only):

   • Who Can Access: All users in your Atlassian Cloud organization.

   • Use Case: Ideal for sharing dashboards with all team members in a managed Atlassian organization.

   • More Info: Learn more about Atlassian Organizations.

5. Any Logged-In User (Jira Server and Data Center Only):

   • Who Can Access: Any user with login access to the Jira instance.

   • Important Notes:

     • Users can only view issues if the project permissions also allow “Any logged-in user” access.

   • Use Case: Useful for sharing dashboards across all users in your company without restricting to specific groups.

How to make a BAD Jira Dashboard

When done poorly, a dashboard can confuse your audience and undermine your message. Here’s how to ensure your dashboard tells a bad story—and how to avoid these pitfalls.

1. Too Many Gadgets

Just like a story with too many characters can be confusing, a dashboard overloaded with gadgets becomes impossible to follow. 

Best Practice: limit your dashboard to 6 gadgets or fewer. If you need to show more data, create additional dashboards for specific use cases. Smaller, focused dashboards communicate information more effectively than a cluttered, all-encompassing one.

2. Too Much Text

A dashboard filled with excessive text is the opposite of visually engaging. While a list of Jira issues can be useful, overloading your dashboard with text forces your audience to interpret raw data rather than understanding your insights at a glance.

Best Practice: limit text-based gadgets to one issue list per dashboard and focus on visualizations like charts and graphs that tell a clear story without requiring heavy interpretation.

3. Irrelevant Charts

If your team doesn’t care about certain data points—like niche issue statuses or non-core team assignments—don’t include them. Worse, combining unrelated charts creates a disconnected, confusing narrative.

Best Practice: curate charts based on the specific message or insight you want to deliver. and ensure every gadget on the dashboard serves a purpose and contributes to the overarching story.

4. Poorly Designed Charts

Bad charts confuse rather than clarify. They might use the wrong chart type, display bad data, or suffer from poor formatting.

Examples of Bad Charts:

• Unclear Pie Charts: Tiny, similar-sized segments make it difficult to compare data.

• Confusing Bar Charts: Bars without labels or inconsistent scales fail to communicate effectively.

Best Practice: choose the right chart type for your data. For example, bar charts are often better for comparisons than pie charts. Clean your data before visualizing it. Eliminate duplicates and inconsistencies, such as multiple "To Do" or "Done" statuses.

5. Misleading Data

Even the best-designed charts can’t save a dashboard if the data itself is flawed. Faulty data leads to faulty conclusions, and you’ll lose your audience’s trust.

Best Practice: validate your data before building your dashboard. Avoid visualizing incomplete or misleading information. If the story isn’t clear, don’t tell it.

How to make a GOOD Jira Dashboard

A great Jira dashboard doesn’t just display data—it tells a story that engages your audience and drives action. 

1. Define Audience

Before creating your dashboard, consider who it’s for:

• Entire team: highlight collective progress and blockers.

• Individual team members: provide tailored insights into personal performance.

• Supervisors or stakeholders: focus on high-level metrics and outcomes.

Narrowing down your audience helps you shape the story your dashboard will tell and ensures the information presented is both relevant and actionable.

2. Craft the Right Story

Your dashboard shouldn’t just be a collection of data points—it should guide your audience through a narrative that leads to insight and action.

Example: Imagine you’ve noticed some team members taking significantly longer to resolve customer requests, which impacts customer satisfaction. Here’s how you can structure your dashboard’s story:

1. Set the context: display workload distribution across all assignees.

2. Lead into the issue: use charts to show average resolution times and customer satisfaction (CSAT) ratings by assignee.

3. Highlight the key insight: identify top-performing and underperforming team members.

4. Encourage discussion: use visualizations to prompt conversations about workload balance, training needs, or process improvements.

3. Make Your Charts Comprehensible

Follow these best practices to ensure your charts are easy to understand:

• Choose the right chart type: use bar charts for comparisons, line charts for trends, and pie charts for proportions—avoid mismatched chart types that confuse viewers.

• Add context: label axes, show percentages, and include descriptions to clarify your data.

Pro Tip: Link to Confluence pages for additional context or metric definitions, ensuring stakeholders have all the information they need.

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What’s your favorite gadget or dashboard setup? Share your tips and tricks in the comments!