Report Builder Introduction
This page explains how Report Builder is put together, so that the rest of the documentation reads as a set of choices rather than a list of buttons.
Three ways to get a report
Route | Choose it when | What it costs you |
|---|---|---|
You can express the question as “this measure, broken down by these fields”. Most questions can be. | Nothing but the configuration panel. No code. | |
Someone has already answered this question — lead time, first response time, ticket bouncing, workload. Faster than starting blank, and every template stays editable. | Nothing. Open it and change what does not fit. | |
The output is not a table or a chart at all — an invoice, a diagram, a layout of your own. | HTML and JavaScript, and someone to maintain it later. |
If none of the three fits and you would rather not write it yourself, the Report Building Service builds the report for you.
What a report is made of
Every visual report is the same four decisions, in this order:
Scope — which issues the report runs over. Projects, epics, a saved filter, or JQL when the pickers cannot express it.
Dimensions — the fields you break the data down by, placed on rows and columns. Assignee down the side, issue type across the top.
Cell content — what appears where a row meets a column. Usually a measure such as Count of Issues or a sum; it can also be a field, which turns each cell into a small chart or list.
Visualisation — pivot table, bar, pie, doughnut, list or a single number.
Changing the visualisation never changes the data, but it does constrain the shape: a number takes one measure and no dimensions, a list puts issues in the rows, and bar, pie and doughnut use rows only. Columns belong to the pivot table.
Where reports live
A report you save is yours until you share it, and the side panel lists your own, the shared, and the gallery ones side by side. From there a report can go onto a Jira dashboard as a gadget, or leave the app entirely as Excel, CSV, PDF or JSON.
Report Builder reads Jira live and keeps no copy of your data outside the instance.
New here? Beginners Guide walks the whole path from opening the app to sharing a finished report.