Jira Cloud for Google Sheets: Automatically Refresh Your Data!

[#1]

Remember that time you realized it was possible to refresh your Jira data in Google sheets with just one click? What if we told you that you can now get the latest data with no clicks at all?! Zero! Nada!

We're happy to announce that you can now schedule all data refreshes ahead of time. Whether it's for your every day standup, weekly check-in, or monthly reviews, you can always be assured that your charts, graphs, and reports are up-to-date.

To schedule a data refresh, open the Jira Cloud for Google Sheets add-on, click “Refresh Jira Data,” and click “Edit” to select how often you would like your data automatically updated. You will be prompted to authenticate with Google in order to allow the integration to refresh your data while you are offline.

Hover over the “Last updated” and “Scheduled update” section to get exact timestamps:

It’s important to note a couple of things:

1. There’s currently a distinction between importing and refreshing Jira data - an import will completely replace the previous sheet, whereas a refresh will only overwrite the affected columns.

2. You can only schedule refreshes for up to three months at once. We will always tell you when your next schedule is, until the end of the three-month period.

3. If you’re scheduling a refresh for a custom function, we won’t be able to display a timestamp for when the data was last updated.

Export filters and searches directly from Jira to Google Sheets, with just one click!

You can now export filters and searches directly from Jira to Google Sheets. You can find the Google Sheets icon as a new option next to the share and export buttons on the issues search page:

Kindly try out this feature and let us know what you think by answering the following questions:

• What were your impressions of the feature?

• How can we improve the feature?

• What do you use the feature for?

If you have any additional feedback, we’d love to talk to you! Feel free to book a 30-minute chat via this link. Cheers!

[Mohamed Benziane]

Thank you for this article. Is there a such feature with excel ?

[Patricia Francezi]

Hi Mohamed. There is no excel app yet, but Atlassian is working on it. 

[Francis Brazeau]

Been anticipating this feature, will be putting it to good use, and hopefully all goes well. Thank you! 

[Rudy Holtkamp]

@Catherine Chang Two quick question:

• Why is it only auto refreshing for three months? It would be nice to be able to choose between 1, 3, 6 and 12 months. 
• You state 'We will always tell you when your next schedule is, until the end of the three-month period.' What does this mean, do I get an email, how do I get notified? 

Thanks, 

Rudy

[Ryan Pesta]

Would like to see an option to refresh greater than 3 months.

[Phyllis Zhu]

 Currently using the Cloud/Google sheet feature for pulling some data into a google sheet that is shared with our Finance team.
It's been great, as now I don't have to keep going to do the steps of the filter and export. Every time they need updated data, I just go and re-import in google sheets. 
Would love to see the option to import and options for greater than 3 months, then that completely removes me from the equation and they will always get the data, even when I'm on vacation. 

[Trevor Miller]

Is there a 1000 record limit like Excel?

[Jessica Madera Gumba]

great! any plans for sharepoint? excel online ? or Power BI? Thanks.

[Philipp Suchan]

@Jessica Madera Gumba  - stay tuned for an Excel announcement in the next two weeks :)

[Rahul Patil]

@Trevor Miller No, there is no limit to the # of issues you can import through this.

[Trevor Miller]

Oh I thought this was an export TO Google Sheets.  Not an import. 

[Philipp Suchan]

@Trevor Miller  - correct, this integration sends Jira data to Google Sheets (Jira export to Sheets). There is no record limit you can export from Jira (import into Google Sheets). :) 

[Rahul Patil]

@Phyllis Zhu  @Ryan Pesta @Rudy Holtkamp Thank you for your feedback. We intentionally started with the smaller 3 months expiry duration for scheduled refresh to ensure any redundant scheduled refresh jobs are not executed ad infinitum. Having said that, we are open to providing a longer expiry (up to 12 months) for scheduled refresh if the need arises and our users request it. 

Thanks once again for your feedback and please let us know if you have any further questions.

[Rahul Patil]

@Rudy Holtkamp  There is no manual notification (or email) for expired schedules currently (we have some ideas to make this more intuitive though). When we say We will always tell you when your next schedule is, it means you can peek at your next schedule run date by hovering on the schedule frequency as mentioned in the original post.

[Rudy Holtkamp]

Thanks @Rahul Patil, for answering my questions. 

"we are open to providing a longer expiry (up to 12 months) for scheduled refresh if the need arises and our users request it"

Can I request it? :-)

Also good to see the Excel variant coming to light. Does this has the same functionality (refresh) as the Google sheets variant?

[Aleksander Dye]

For Excel @Mohamed Benziane I use the filter function and just

1. export it with the chosen colums in the same location every time
2. first time only
   1. open excel and god to the data tab
   2. choose from text / csv
   3. go through the import steps
   4. save
3. every other time
   1. open the excel sheet
   2. new data is available :)

This way you can predefine data for reports and pitvots if needed. At least it saves some time compared to doing it manually every time

kind regards,

Aleksander

[Mohamed Benziane]

Thanks @Aleksander Dye i will try it !!

[Aleksander Dye]

Just let me know if you need any more assistance on the setup I can provide more details if you need @Mohamed Benziane 

[Sara Dubuque]

@Rudy Holtkamp  We have absolutely noted your request and as Rahul said, we're open to extending the time window in the future.

As to your other question, the Excel integration does have the functionality to refresh the sheet and we'll be adding the ability to schedule that refresh soon.

Thanks for your interest and questions! Let us know if you have more. 

[Rudy Holtkamp]

Thank you @Sara Dubuque

I surely will put the questions down when I have them. 

[Luke Machowski]

For anyone wanting to achieve something similar (JIRA integration) in Excel, I would strongly suggest you use the “Get and Transform” feature (formally Power Query) to achieve that. It’s a great example of how “data flow” into your spreadsheet can make a huge difference in unlocking your data-gold in Jira. Google Sheets doesn’t have a data flow equivalent yet. You have to rely on plugins like these to implement each step of the data flow. I am happy to share details if anyone is interested. 

[Philipp Suchan]

Hi there - I am happy to announce that we have released Jira Cloud for Excel add-in. It is available on the Appsource marketplace today: https://appsource.microsoft.com/en-us/product/office/WA200000556?tab=Overview

[Trevor Miller]

Might not be fully published yet.  After opening in excel it asks to trust the add-in which results in Add-In Error, We cant load this add-in because we couldn't connect to the catalog.  I search the store direct and its not found.

[Philipp Suchan]

Hi @Trevor Miller  - can you check your Excel version. The add-in requires:

• Office on Windows (Excel 2016 - version 1904 or later, connected to Office 365 subscription)

• Office on Mac (version 16.24 or later, connected to Office 365 subscription)

• Office on the web

This article might help troubleshoot: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/testing/testing-and-troubleshooting

[Trevor Miller]

Yeah i'm using 2016 Professional Plus non-365 but logged into my MS Account through partner program.  The add-in page only states "Excel 2016+"