Jira Gadget Types – Chapter 11

Jira Gadgets are placeholders which are used to depict information in a meaningful way in the form of Charts, Tables, Information, Link, Maps etc. It helps to visualize and track your Project, Team deliverables. It displays dynamic information which automatically refreshes based on the set interval provided while configuring the gadget. We did talk about how to insert a gadget in one of our previous chapters (Chapter 8), lets spend sometime more on gadgets.

Gadgets are categorized into two broad categories:

1. Pre-Installed : These gadgets are standard gadgets that come along with the JIRA Installation.
2. Extension Gadgets: These gadgets are available as Plugins and in order to use them you need to install and enable them.

There of course are some commonly used gadgets like-

a. Assigned to Me: This gadget is useful for an Individual and shows open Issues which are assigned to him. This is present in System’s Dashboard by default.

b. Filter Results: Filters are a way to selectively group your data. This is very important gadget and displays the result of the selected filter. Any type of information can be displayed in this Gadget as it simply displays the result of Filter.

c. Issue Statistics: It displays the number and percentage of issues in all the status based on selected Filter/Project.

d. Pie Chart: This is very useful chart. It displays data in a Pie chart by grouping the same based on the selected parameter. An example for the same is displaying Number of Issues in a status.

e. Recently created Chart: This gadget displays the recently created/resolved issues in bar chart for the set duration. the set duration.

f. Resolution Time : This gadget is useful for Kanban Projects where it displays the issue’s elapsed time from the created date to resolved date. 

g. Sprint Burndown Gadget: This gadget displays the Burn down chart for the Sprint. There is also another way to display the Burn down Chart using Reports which was covered in Chapter 10 – JIRA Metrics

h. Two Dimensional Filter Statistics: This is used to display statistics from a filter. It specifies fields  in X and Y Axis both for data which you want to display. An example for the same is displaying number of issues categorized by Issue Type and Assignee.

i. Multiple Filters Gadget: This is very helpful Gadget and it can display same information in Bar/Line/Pie Chart. This has different gadgets for displaying weekly or monthly data. All the previous gadgets mentioned displays data using only 1 filter/Project whereas this gadget uses one or more than one filters in a single Chart. An example of the same could be displaying Open Issues vs Closed Issues in a month/week using two different or same filters.

Apart from the available gadgets that are listed in the tool, you have an option to create your own gadget using XML descriptor file. Follow the Atlassian guide for creating Atlassian Gadgets.

Lets take a look on how to add such a gadget-

Step 1 -> Login into Jira and open your dashboard – we will refer to the same TRIAL-Dashboard example that we had created in Chapter 6.

Step 2 -> Click on the “Add Gadget” button displayed on top right corner or on “add a new gadget” link displayed in the Dashboard screen.

Step 3 -> On the pop window, click on the “Manage Gadgets” Link displayed on top right corner of the Gadgets screen. Do note – you need admin rights to perform this step.

Step 4 -> You can now mention the URL of the gadget that you want to be included in the Jira project. Lets take an example, you need to add a Bamboo gadget (xml file) from http://bamboo.example.com:8085/rest/gadgets/1.0/g/com.atlassian.bamboo.gadgets/charts/bambooCharts.xml

This adds a new gadget entry on the Gadgets pop up- the one that we saw in Step 3. Cool, right?? Try adding such gadgets to your Jira project.

Happy Exploring!!

Click here for Chapter 12 – Scrum boards.