Anyone familiar with the "Jira Cloud for Excel (official)" app?

[GregPearson]

I'm wondering if any admins have experience with this app?

• What is your overall impression of the app?
• Does every user with a Jira license that wants to use it have to turn it on individually through Excel or is it somehow enabled across the board for all Jira users?
• Was there anything particular you had to do with Microsoft licensing to enable it to work in Excel? Looks like to you actually get the app through the Microsoft app store, not the Atlassian app store.
• If you tried this app and moved off it to a different app to export to Excel, which alternative did you choose?

Thanks for your thoughts?

[Łukasz Modzelewski _TTPSC_ · Accepted solution]

Hi @GregPearson ,

App is very interesting, it has some powerful features e.g. auto refresh and it's made by Atlassian. Downside - it's read only, if you want to analyze data it's enough, to make any changes you need to get back to Jira.

Sure, there are other alternatives in marketplace :) 

I'm from the team behind "Excel 365 Connector for Jira", in our app you can do much more than just import issues to Excel. You can make changes and send them back to Jira, or create new issues etc. There are also features like changing statuses or logging work on task directly from Excel.

As for the installation, all users need to install app from official MS Store, but we got it covered in our getting started section: Getting started 

Cheers,
Łukasz

[GregPearson]

I appreciate the insight!

[MobilityStream · Accepted solution]

Hi @GregPearson

Full disclosure, we are a Marketplace vendor with a similar offering.

When it works, it is pretty slick if you are okay that your users need to install an add-in and work directly in Excel. There is no export from within Jira option. Everyone with a newer version of Excel and a Jira account can install the Add-in though.

As long as  a user has a valid Microsoft Excel license it should work. The user needs to be signed in to their Microsoft account to install the add-in. Also there is sometimes a workaround required if you are on Mac.

Jira issues are exported in Excel itself via JQL, filters, or special function. For smaller exports this works pretty well but can become problematic when you have to bring over large number of issues.

It is a great tool if you occasionally need to export some Jira issues.

Unfortunately, there are many problems with it. They are well documented on the Atlassian Community. One vendor even started categorizing and listing the encountered issues. Random disconnects, suddenly stops working and users have to reinstall and reconnect seem to be a frequent problem. And also if you have multiple Jira Cloud instances it only connects to the first one... and the list goes on.

One more thing, it is unclear how committed Atlassian is to continue this add-in. They just tried to discontinue a similar add-in for Google Sheets and then had to backtrack. Here is description of what happened.

If you are looking for alternatives just search on the Atlassian Marketplace for Excel. There are several approaches that work more reliably. For example, our add-on Excel Online Integration works directly within Jira and allows you to download xlsx files or export to Excel 365. This may or may not work for you but again there are many add-ons out there.

Hopefully that helps and gives you some ideas.

Kind regards,

- The Mobility Team

[GregPearson]

Thanks for sharing this information!

[Levente Szabo _Midori_]

@GregPearson 

Similarly to @MobilityStream , we are also offering a Jira to Excel reporting tool which has been on the market for 8 years (Server) and a little over a year on Cloud. As others mentioned, Jira Cloud for Excel covers the basics (mostly), but customers reported a few downsides that we collected in a blog. Pay attention to these and see what workaround is available.

I also recommend you give Better Excel Exporter for Jira Cloud a try!

(Please note that Better Excel Exporter is a paid and supported app and I'm part of the team developing it.)