How can I report on Projects by their Category?

[Nikita Diepenhorst]

The way my insurance organization is using Jira is to create a Project and define its Project Category based on the line of business its work is oriented around (ie; earthquake, wind, fire, etc). However, when I go to create a Filter to report off of this to see how many Projects we currently have underway for certain lines, 1) the Project's Category does not display as a column and 2) the Filters only apply to Issues, not Projects. So I am left with a list of Issues that I can filter by Project Name, but the Category column in the Filters page applies to the Issues, not the Project. If I were to create a separate Custom Field for Project Category, that would mean tracking manually on each and every Issue the Project Category.

I can obviously filter the Projects page by Category and see there what is currently out there, but there is no way to export this list from there to do further reporting outside of Jira that I have found. 

Is there another place in Jira to report off of the assigned Project Category? Or am I asking something of Jira that it is not built to do and should look for another way to utilize it?

[Dieter · Accepted solution]

Definitely whenever you want to track the status of an entity (be it real world like a device or something abstract like a requirement or a bug) JIRA is a good candidate to enter the play.

Besides what you mentionned I like to get automated reminders from subscriptions, e.g. for overdue issues or weekly reports ai have to do. Excel can't do that for you, it's passive until you open it. Using customized mail templates you can automatically provide reports for managers as soon as critical actions have been taken, e.g. when an expensive equipment breaks.

The problems you will probably face with JIRA is to get acceptance for the user interface by end users (not developers). But since there is SpeakEasy you can also better customize the UI for more unexperienced users and hide away a lot of all the bells and whistles in JIRA.

[Rob Davis]

+1 and accepted. What I wanted to read :) But what you say makes sense to me. Thank you. I'd welcome anyone else to contribute too.