How to export a Jira Cloud dashboard to PDF

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Jira Cloud has no native way to export a dashboard to a document file. This is a platform constraint rather than a setting: there is no export option on the dashboard, browsers lay dashboards out badly when printed, and an image capture loses selectable text and clickable links. Sharing the dashboard URL only works for people who already hold a Jira license and have permission on every underlying filter.

Better PDF Exporter for Jira Cloud adds that capability. It renders the dashboard and its gadgets into a PDF document that keeps the layout, the text and the links, and that anyone can open without a Jira account.

How to export a Jira Cloud dashboard to PDF

Install Better PDF Exporter for Jira Cloud. A new menu item appears on your dashboards. Then:

1. Open the dashboard and click the ... menu in the upper right corner.
2. Choose Export dashboard to PDF.
3. Select the Dashboard PDF export type. Two alternatives export the same dashboard into a two-column or three-column layout.
4. The PDF is generated and downloads to your browser automatically.

The export option appears in the "..." menu in the upper right corner of the dashboard

Choosing the export type and layout before the PDF is generated

The resulting file can be emailed, archived, printed, or edited further like any other business document. You can also show or hide individual gadgets, apply your company logo and colors, change the column layout, and combine Jira gadgets with other content in the same PDF.

Why the app asks for your email address and an API token

The Jira Cloud REST API does not expose dashboard content. Without a second route to the data, no app could read your gadgets in order to render them. The email address and Jira API token give the app authenticated access to the dashboard as you. 

On the app side, Better PDF Exporter for Jira Cloud holds Atlassian's Cloud Fortified classification, which is only granted to apps that participate in every Atlassian-mandated security program. Midori also holds a SOC 2 Type II report and GDPR compliance, and publishes the underlying controls and policy documents on its security and trust page.

A few practical points, since this is the step most first-time users stop at:

• Use the email address linked to your Atlassian account, not an alias.
• Create a token dedicated to this app and name it something recognizable, for example "Better PDF Exporter". That way revoking it later affects nothing else.
• You enter this once. The app remembers both values until you revoke the token, which is also how you make it forget them.
• The values are encrypted and stored in AWS, not in your Jira instance.

Which gadgets can be exported

All of them. Support comes in two forms on Jira Cloud.

Full support means real text that stays selectable and searchable, working links, and charts rendered as vectors. This covers:

• Filter Results
• Issue Statistics
• Two-Dimensional Filter Statistics
• Assigned to Me
• Issues in Progress
• Voted Issues and Watched Issues
• The chart gadgets Pie Chart, Created vs Resolved Chart, Average Age Chart, Resolution Time Chart, Time Since Chart, and Average Time in Status
• The Agile gadgets Agile Wallboard, Sprint Burndown, and Sprint Health
• The Jira Service Management Filter Counts gadget
• and Activity Stream, Jira Issues Calendar, Labels, Projects and Rich Text.

Screenshot support covers every remaining gadget type. These print correctly, but the text is not selectable, and the links are not clickable.

Gadgets from Custom Charts and Rich Filters are fully supported, so dashboards built on those apps export with real text rather than as images. If a gadget you depend on is currently exporting as a screenshot and you would like full support, send a feature request to Midori support and it gets prioritized against the rest of the queue.

Exporting Jira reports and agile boards through gadgets

Most Jira reports have an equivalent gadget, which makes the dashboard export a route to exporting reports as well. The Created vs Resolved Issues Report, for example, has a Created vs. Resolved Chart gadget that produces the same output. Put the gadget on a dashboard, export the dashboard, and you have the report in a shareable, printable form. Add several gadgets and you combine several reports into one PDF.

The same approach covers agile boards. Jira has no board export. The Agile Wallboard gadget pulls the board of an ongoing sprint onto a dashboard, and exporting the dashboard exports the board with it. Scrum, Kanban and Kanplan boards all work this way.

A scrum board exported to PDF through the Agile Wallboard gadget

Running the export on a schedule instead of manually

Manual exports cover ad hoc requests. Recurring reporting is better handled by automation, and this is available on Jira Cloud through the free Better PDF Automation for Jira, which requires Better PDF Exporter to work.

A rule can be triggered on a schedule, such as every Monday at 08:00 before the weekly review, or on an event such as a sprint completing. The action emails the PDF to a fixed or dynamic recipient list, or attaches it to a Jira issue. For dashboards the rule needs two specific values in the request body: the dashboard ID in dashboardId, and the literal value DASHBOARD in viewContext. Exporting the dashboard manually once and then clicking View PDF automation tips in the export dialog generates the whole section for you with the identifiers already filled in.

This is also relevant to anyone who has read Atlassian's CHANGE-3208 deprecation notice from 10 August 2026, which removes dashboard subscriptions and server-side PDF and PNG exports from Atlassian Analytics between 8 September and 2 November 2026. To be precise about the scope: that notice concerns Atlassian Analytics dashboards, not Jira dashboards, and Better PDF Exporter is not a substitute for Analytics as a BI tool. Where it does overlap is delivery. If your Analytics dashboard existed mainly because a Jira dashboard could not be exported or emailed, the gadgets are already available in Jira and a scheduled export produces the same recurring report from inside Jira. The full setup for both Jira Cloud and Jira Data Center is written up in this guide.

What changed since this article was first published in 2020

• The export dialog gained a step. You now pick the Dashboard PDF export type, or one of the two multi-column variants, before the export runs.
• Gadget coverage went from a fixed list to universal. Every gadget type now exports, either with full support or as a screenshot.
• Third-party gadget support arrived. Custom Charts and Rich Filters gadgets export with full formatting.
• Automation came to Jira Cloud. Scheduled and event-driven dashboard exports were Data Center only when this article was written.

Why teams asked for this in the first place

When Better PDF Exporter for Jira Cloud was rebuilt, we asked customers what they wanted next. Dashboard export was the request that stood out, and the reasoning was consistent.

Mark at Cabott Cheese put it this way:

"Dashboards are the only real way to customize the display of info in Jira. Exporting them to PDF is therefore a natural extension of that functionality. I would export my status dashboard to PDF and send that to my boss weekly, rather than send him a link to some Jira filter."

Jon at ProService Hawaii described the licensing version of the same problem. They had 300 Confluence users who needed information that lived on Jira dashboards. Those users had no reason to hold Jira accounts, so the question was how to share a Jira dashboard without a login at all.

Both cases come down to the same thing. A dashboard is the most flexible reporting surface Jira has, and it is the hardest one to get out of Jira. That is the gap the export closes.

Beyond dashboards, teams use Better PDF Exporter for support documents for sprint planning, stand-ups and retros, for invoices and timesheets built from Jira data including Tempo Timesheets, and for Jira archiving solutions.

Where to go next

The dashboards documentation covers column layouts, paper sizes, gadget frame colors, template customization, and the settings for wait time and screenshot resolution that fix slow-loading or oversized gadgets.

For finished examples, the dashboard and report export samples include a weekly Jira Service Management report, a scrum sprint report and a project status report, and the Template Gallery holds the rest.

Try Better PDF Exporter for Jira Cloud