Is there a way to capture the daily backlog in Jira?

[Piyush Mistry]

Typically the ticket status changes very frequently given the progress one makes. So the total count of open tickets is dynamic. If a snapshot is available that indicates the open count daily at a given point of time will help to see the past trends.

[Amit Bansal]

Hi...

If by backlog you mean items with no sprint then use this query i.e. 

project = <<project name>> AND Sprint is null and issuetype in (Bug, Defect, Story, Task) order by created DESC.

It will give you count of backlog items.

[Darryl Lee]

So that's the right query. I think the next step is to "save" these counts somewhere if you are looking to see trends.

Minimally, you could use a Scheduled Trigger to:

1. Do a Lookup issues on the above query
2. Then send yourself an email every day at the given time.

You would include the count in the message with something like:

Current number is issues in project YOURPROJECT backlog:

{{lookupIssues.size}}

Of course it would be better if the counts were stored in a database or spreadsheet for easy access or graphing. But I just looked into how to talk to the Google Sheets API without Oauth and my head hurts.

[Piyush Mistry]

Thanks Amit for your response

By backlog I mean open items, i.e. All open items

[Tracy Stimac]

Perhaps using this in a Dashboard widget would work for you.

[Benny]

I also have the same need to track the issues progress daily.

What I do is to use the subscription in the saved filter to send me a reminder every morning, like at 6 am. This way I got the status of issues at the beginning of the day.

But this is not like a snapshot, the subscription only send the list of issue based on the filter we saved, not the issue itself. But this is enough for me to see the issues progress.

The other way is you can setup a scheduled automation rule and use the JQL for the rule to filter the issue and then use an action to send email for each issue, I have not try this but it is possible, but you will get one email for each issue.

[Piyush Mistry]

Thanks Benny,

You suggestion is good and I use something similar and keep the track outside Jira in excel manually (not an elegant way). This is all goo workaround, outside Jira and a manual effort involved, it would be nice to have it in Jira and see it on the Dashboard. Such trends are an important analysis.

[Haddon Fisher]

Jira itself probably cannot do this; there's no meaningful way to access the history of issues within the tool itself or otherwise take a 'snapshot' for use.

However I have done similar things using Google Sheets in the past and recently I've moved over to Airtable which can actually do this automatically:

1. Set up your Airtable base with one "sync table" containing the issues you want to see.
2. Build an Airtable automation that copies data from this table to a new table, adding the "export date" as an additional data-point, on a schedule. It can do it daily or even hourly if you really need that level of granularity.

The result is a table containing an expanding series of snapshots on-top of which you can built all sorts of things. I use this approach for PI metrics, program accounting, and team sprint metrics, but anything that requires trend analysis or historical tracking could probably fit into this model.

[Piyush Mistry]

Thanks Haddon for your feedback, will explore it

[KJ]

Could you use the OOB Cumulative Flow Diagram available in Reports to show the number of issues in each status at any given time?

View and understand the cumulative flow diagram 

[Johnny FromCanada]

Any JQL query should probably include:  “(…) AND statusCategory != Done”

[Marquita Pruitt]

Just use the "created vs. resolved" report in the report menu of a project (or the same named gadget in a dashboard). You can set it to show you daily increments or weekly, monthly, or quarterly.  The one below is set on weekly.

If seeing resolved issues is too much - as you specifically asked to see creations only - then just edit the source filter to omit resolved issues.  Then it will only show a chart of the issues created over time in the past. 

jql to omit resolved issues:

project = ABC and resolution is EMPTY

[Johnny FromCanada]

The Created vs Resolved chart has a feature called "Display the Trend of Unresolved", which shows the unresolved issues over time. 

[Piyush Mistry]

Thanks Marquita,

This will help to see the current status of created and resolved only and will not consider the other status (e.g. WIP) that accounts for all open count (so called backlog)

[Marquita Pruitt]

Piyush,
Glad this helps, but just to clarify, this does not help you see "current status" of anything.  Regardless of status, it just showing you a total number of issues created on any given day and the number of issues resolved on any given day (yes, resolution date is typically tied to a "done" status, but not always - meaning if admin forgets to have resolution set during the last transition, then there will be no resolution date).  Anyway, I'm just clarifying that this report doesn't have anything do to with status. 😉

[Aron Gombas _Midori_]

On Data Center, you can use the Better Excel Automation app to take a daily snapshot of the issues . It can save a Excel spreadsheet created by the Better Excel Exporter app each day.

On Cloud, however, the exporter app is already available, but Atlassian does not allow implementing custom automation actions in their automation rules. :-( Therefore we were not able to implement the automation app yet.

But when it becomes possible, it will be a great solution to your problem also on Cloud.

[Piyush Mistry]

Thanks Aron, Was looking for something in Jira itself.

[Amit Bansal]

You can run a query to see all open items without sprint and show them using 3 dimensional widget wherein count of open items segregated across dates.