Tracking Time Between Issue Status Transitions and Displaying in Issue Queue with Automation

[Centro de Excelecia TI]

Hello Jira Community,

I am working on a project using Jira Service Management and I need to implement a solution to track the time it takes for an issue to transition from one status to another. My goal is to capture this duration and display it directly within the issue queue for easier monitoring and management.

To achieve this, I'm considering creating custom fields to record the timestamp when an issue enters and exits specific statuses, and then calculating the elapsed time based on these timestamps. However, I'm unsure about the best practices for setting up these custom fields, and how to configure automation rules in Jira to update these fields upon status changes.

Furthermore, I'm looking to display this time duration information in the issue queues, but I'm uncertain about how to include calculated fields (or if there's a way to dynamically calculate and display this duration within the queues without needing additional plugins).

Could anyone please provide guidance or share insights on:

1. Best practices for creating and utilizing custom fields to track time between status transitions.
2. Configuring automation rules to update these fields with the current timestamp when issues change statuses.
3. Strategies for calculating the elapsed time based on these timestamps, especially if this can be accomplished directly within Jira or if it requires external tools/plugins.
4. Displaying this calculated duration in the issue queues for easy access and monitoring.

Any advice, including references to relevant plugins or scripts that could simplify this process, would be greatly appreciated. I'm open to alternative approaches if there's a more efficient way to achieve similar outcomes.

Thank you in advance for your help and suggestions!

[Mehmet A _Bloompeak_]

Hi @Centro de Excelecia TI

Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

There is no built-in solution for time in status info in Jira. If you prefer using a marketplace app, you can try Status Time Reports app developed by our team. It mainly provides reports and gadgets based on how much time passed in each status.

Here is the online demo link, you can see it in action and try without installing the app. For your case, you can have a look at Time in Status for Each Issue report.

For further details, you can have a look at Status Time Reports How to Videos.

• This app has a dynamic status grouping feature so that you can generate various valuable reports as time in status, time in assignee, status entry dates and status counts, cycle time and lead time, resolution time, average/sum reports by any field(e.g. average in progress time by project, average cycle time by issue creation month).

• You can search issues by Project, Issue Type, Status, Assignee, Issue Creation/Resolution Date(and any other Date field) and JQL Query.
• Status durations are calculated according to the working calendar you define. Once you enter your working calendar into the app, it takes your working schedule into account too. That is, "In Progress" time of an issue opened on Friday at 5 PM and closed on Monday at 9 AM, will be a few hours rather than 3 days.
• You can set different duration formats.
• You can export reports in CSV file format and open them in MS Excel.
• You can also add this app as a gadget to your Jira dashboards and reach “Status Time” from Issue Detail page.
• You can enable/disable access to Status Time reports&gadgets and Issue Detail page per project, users, groups or project role.

If you are looking for a completely free solution, you can try the limited version Status Time Reports Free.

Hope it helps.

[Iryna Komarnitska_SaaSJet_]

Hi @Centro de Excelecia TI ,

I can advise you to use an app developed by my team.

Time Between Statuses is an addon designed to calculate the time between statuses and measure various time KPIs based on these calculations.

The screenshot shows an example of a report for the Support team. It illustrates how the required metrics are measured.

It's all based on the timer configuration, where you set up how and when the app should count the time spent by a task between different statuses.

It is also possible to set up highlights of values that exceed the permissible level. In this case, you can also set up notifications (issue and email notifications).

For you - 30 days of free trial. You can also book a demo with our specialist.

I hope this will be useful for you!

[Amay Purohit_RVS]

Hi @Centro de Excelecia TI 

Welcome to the community !!

For an alternate  approach, tf you are open to try out a mktplace app to get this data, you can take a look at 

Time in Status Reports 

The time in status report shows the time spent by your issues in each status during the entire workflow. 

The app has 20+ reports to track your bottleneck Issues & Processes.

More details here

Disclaimer : I work for the vendor who built this app

[Danut M _StonikByte_]

Hi @Centro de Excelecia TI,

There are better and easier ways to track the time between statuses or the age of the issues, as well as highlighting and easily identifying the issues that took/take longer than expected. 

This article might be of great help for you:  https://community.atlassian.com/t5/App-Central/An-effective-dashboard-for-Service-Desk-and-Customer-Support/ba-p/2360369 

Danut.

[Gizem Gökçe _OBSS_]

Update on May 9th, 2024: Time in Status by OBSS was recently rebranded as Timepiece. It is still the same capable app with the same dedicated team behind it. The answer below mentions the app as "Time in Status" but you can find the app in the marketplace as "Timepiece (formerly Time in Status)". 

Hello @Centro de Excelecia TI ,

Welcome to the community!

If you are ok to use a marketplace app for your reports, Time in Status which is developed by my team at OBSS, is the tool I would highly recommend. It is available for both Jira Cloud and Data Center.

Time in Status mainly allows you to see how much time each issue spent on each status or each assignee. 

Time in Status offers two report types for your case:

The first one is Status Duration report (please see the screenshot above) which shows how much time each issue spent on each status. You can combine the time for multiple statuses to get metrics like Issue Age, Cycle Time, Lead Time, Resolution Time etc. 

As an alternative approach, Time in Status also has Duration Between Statuses report type which shows the duration between two specific statuses. This report type also allows the user to exclude the times for "pause" statuses.

For all numeric report types, you can calculate averages and sums of those durations grouped by the issue fields you select. For example total in-progress time per customer or average resolution time per sprint, week, month, issuetype, request type, etc. The ability to group by parts of dates (year, month, week, day, hour) or sprints is particularly useful here since it allows you to compare different time periods or see the trend. 

The app calculates its reports using already existing Jira issue histories so when you install the app, you don't need to add anything to your issue workflows and you can get reports on your past issues as well.

Time in Status reports can be accessed through its own reporting page, dashboard gadgets, and issue view screen tabs. All these options can provide both calculated data tables and charts. And the app has a REST API so you can get the reports from Jira UI or via REST. Also you can export the reports in to various formats easily. 

Visit Time in Status to explore how our JIRA add-on can revolutionize your metrics measurement process. Enjoy a 30-day free trial to experience the full range of features.

If you wish, you can also schedule a live demo. We will provide a comprehensive overview of the application and address any inquiries you may have.

Hope it helps,

Gizem

[Mikael Sandberg]

Hi @Centro de Excelecia TI,

Welcome to Atlassian Community!

One option instead of using custom fields and automation would be to use SLAs instead. They will show the amount of time it took for the SLA to stop based on the configuration.