r/jira • u/Independent_View_438 • 11d ago
intermediate API Versus Web Interface for reporting
I work for a mid size tech company, I've been routinely generating pdf reports for upper management via the API programmatically. I'd been asked to build a manager dashboard with kpi's, sla's and a bunch of other reporting metrics for the Software Support teams. So I did that with a hosted python/flask webapp, its pretty, its fast, its intuitive, tons of data but smooth organized and readable.
As upper management doesn't understand much about Jira other than they spent a metric shitton of money getting it all set up, they asked why I made a custom app rather than Jira dashboards.
I brought up the question, how many places just use the jira web interface and how many build outside tools using the API? Personally, I never open the jira website anymore, I do everything through my own tooling, even basic ticket handling of opening, commenting and transitioning ticket, cause it just seems faster, easier and more readable.
So, how common is it to use customized seperate apps to use jira?
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u/ConsultantForLife 11d ago edited 11d ago
Platinum partner here. There's a very large set of users of Jira on the small end. Think the 50 users or less. Almost all of them are fine using the built in tools. Then there's the upper tier - enterprise users with thousands of users, with dedicated teams for reporting, usually using BI or Tableau - they also have access to the Atlassian Analytics module + data lake, and they do custom reporting.
And then there's the middle group on Premium without the data lake - they often end up like you - building custom solutions because their options are limited. There's nothing wrong with what you did of course, and I kind of want to see it, but the needs of the middle group are often as adanced as the enterprise but without the resources natively available to do it, so the custom stuff gets created.
Edit: spelling
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u/Independent_View_438 11d ago
That's some great context I appreciate it, this company has hundreds and hundreds of users, however its kind of a weird collections of a whole bunch of different businesses and software and teams. Its also one of those places with tech debt that would make the US government deficit blush. We dont have any report teams, just a small handful of 'Jira Developers' who are primarily overseas contractors. Its let up to each team, person, department to make their own dashboards etc. So, yeah for "This teams open tickets" sure fine, jira filters etc. But our ticketing system was implemented so poorly, any most any filter is incomplete. I *could* do this in Forge... but.. that whole process would take months at this place. I'll dm you some screenshots since you were interested
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u/Defconx19 11d ago
Built in all day long. The entire point of using a vendor supported platform with the capabilities of Jira is to use the tools it has. Centralization and reduction of complexity is a massive part of it's draw.
I would be asking you the same thing. Jira dashboards are some of the best native dashboards/reporting in the game IMO.
When I rolled it out in my org, I actually trained management on how to create filters and dashboards so they also had the ability to see data in the way that they want it at any time.
Realistically they shouldn't even need you to make a dashboard.
The last thing most company need is another custom unsupported (by a vendor) solution kicking around.
This is how I see it, likely how management sees it. The goal is to standardize so if someone leaves they dont have to troubleshoot something custom and undocumented. Fixing it is a support call away regardless of staffing.
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u/Hotsp0t 11d ago
Fully agree. But you can run in to the issue that Jira dashboards are limited to JQL, where you can’t do CTE’s and sub-queries, which is often essential when building KPIs.
Atlassian Analytics is super sweet, you get good ol’ SQL and plenty of graphing options. But the jump in cost i significant.
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u/Defconx19 11d ago
Yes but there is difference between making something that cant functionally be done, and just making your default goto a custom solution even if it is capable.
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u/Intrepidatious 8d ago
I use an extension to access it in Google’s Data Studio (formerly Looker Studio). Besides being able to create dynamic reports that would not be possible in Jira (and also create reports for shareholders who don’t log in to Jira), I can also blend it against external data.
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u/ramraiderqtx 11d ago
So this is a typical management challenge, you have highlighted they see a lot of money going out the door and they need to see ROI and you’re showing them something which isn’t in Jira. So if you’re not using this investment. It would make them nervous they bought a platform which isn’t doing what they expect. Ie. they are expecting it all under one roof of Jira. So this is ‘perception management’ issue not a technical issue. You can counter by showing them how much extra in plugins or forge work it would cost them to do this../
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u/Defconx19 11d ago
Its not about technical or buy in, its about moving to a vendor supported solution typically and streamlining your stack. Management has the correct approach on this.
Developers typically suffer from the "i can build it better" mentality when reality that is such and insignificant part of the equation and how it fits into supporting the company.
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u/lunagra80 11d ago
100% agree. When I get the same questions I always answer that Jira is notoriously not great at custom reports especially if they need logic to aggregate company measurements and especially the C-level reports, they always are built with external tools or add-ons and Jira is the place where people insert data. Not the reporting layer. This was always enough to sell my point.
That said if you are in cloud Analytics is very good at surface data in a database view, you still need to use that data in a pretty tool that is made for reporting like BiqQuey, Tableau, etc or custom scripts like OP did
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u/netean 11d ago
personally, I've only ever used built in tooling - with an occasional marketplace app in the past (can't remember which one) As soon as the demand for something more than default dashboard/reporting came up the cost to develop and maintain became the blocker - along with "where do we deploy it questions" - meaning multiple teams had to get involved (systems, devops, change management, backup, Business continuity/disaster recovery, opsec etc)
The cost to serve a "simple" solution like yours would have cost a lot in most places I've worked: documenting the change, managing the backup strategy, adding it to the patching plan, firewall config, additional hosting costs just to name a small amount.