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How to get automatic project reports in Jira with Projectrak

Written by David García | Feb 3, 2017 11:29:00 AM

Tracking projects metrics within an organization, no matter the size, are essential for project managers using Jira, it can predict its success or not. Here we will talk about the best way to work it around in Jira with some help of Projectrak (formerly Profields), to achieve success at the business metrics strategies and goals.

Implement project metrics in Jira should follow a healthy business intelligence strategy, all those multiple projects in your instance need to be managed and organized, or the point might be losing on their way.

Learn more about a different and updated approach of Jira project reporting >>

There’s no difference between a software, financial or real estate company. There will always be a lot of information to handle, and decisions will need to be made: it’s good practice having quality data to help you make the right decisions.

Setting up Jira for project management and project tracking 

 If you are using Jira in your company to organize your teams and issues, you have already completed the 50% of the work. Well done, however, there are more things to do.

As you might know, Jira Projects are just a collection of issues. They almost don’t have information to store, only the name, key, category and leader.

What happens if you need to set the budget of the project or a due date? In that moment, you need Projectrak.

Projectrak is the best way to organize your Projects in Jira, it will enable you to search and filter among them.
Some of the queries you can do with Projectrak are:

  •    Show me the projects which will finish next month.
  •    Get projects where the budget has overrun in by more than $10,000.
  •    Show me the projects which total number of logged work is less than 100 hours.

Regarding with this last query: sometimes you need to know a calculated metric of all issues in a project.

How to calculate the total time spent on a Jira project?

Let’s take a commonly used field as an example: the time spent on the issues and we will show how to calculate the total time spent on an entire project making a differentiation with Server and Cloud instances:

1. Create the field on Projectrak.

Jira Server (you will need Jira admin privileges):

  1. Go to Jira Add-ons administration -> Fields Manager -> Add Field.
  2. Select Cumulative field type -> click Next.
  3. Fill the form with the field’s name, description and permissions.
  4. Select Time Spent on the Cumulative field list.

Jira Cloud (no Jira admin privileges are needed):

  1. Go to Projectrak menu -> Fields -> Create field.
  2. Select Cumulative field type -> click Next.
  3. Fill the form with the field’s name, description.
  4. Select Time Spent on the Number field list.


2. Add field to a scheme.

Jira Server (you will need Jira admin privileges):

  1. Go to Jira Add-ons administration -> Schemes -> Configure on the desired scheme or create a new one.
  2. Add field *-> search “Total time worked” -> *Add.
  3. Click Save.

Jira Cloud (no Jira admin privileges are needed):

  1. Go to Projectrak menu -> Layouts -> click on the desired layout or create a new one.
  2. Click on the Options button on the right side –> Edit current layout.
  3. Select the field "Total worked time" in any box on the layout.
  4. Click Save.

3. Results.

Server and Cloud (no Jira admin privileges are needed):

Under the Projectrak tab in the Project Page you will see the calculated total time of the logged work of the entire project.

Jira Server:

Jira Cloud:

Do you want to have total control of your Jira Projects?