Turning business data into valuable, useful insights is top of mind for most teams. The good news is, most of us have plenty of data — the challenge then becomes translating data sets from a variety of platforms and distilling them down into a consumable format. Luckily there are plenty of tools that help teams do this in the market today.

Two solutions this post covers are Jira and Power BI. Jira is an Atlassian software application used by agile teams for issue tracking, project management, and much more. Power BI is a Microsoft application that enables enterprises to view data and create reports from a range of sources, so they can see all their important data (like Azure, Excel, Github, Google, and more) in one place.

If you use Jira and Power BI read on to learn how you can connect these tools to visualize data, automate reporting, and make more data-driven decisions.

View all of your important business data in one place

If your team is using Power BI for reporting and collaboration, you’ll likely need to connect or access various data sources to create reports and dashboards. Just like other data sets, Jira data offers a wealth of knowledge around how teams get work done and provides insights into productivity, redundancies, KPIs, and more.

By combining Jira data with the reporting capabilities of Power BI, you can visualize outputs, projects, and goals in a whole new way. Plus, you can provide access to data and dashboards in one place rather than sending team members to multiple platforms in search of information. This is key for stakeholders who either aren’t familiar with Jira or don’t have access to all the necessary reports or instances.

Below are several examples of how teams build dashboards and reports with their Jira data in Power BI, but the possibilities are truly endless.

Service-level agreement (SLA) tracking

Support teams can use Jira data in Power BI to report how quickly cases are responded to or resolved. SLA tracking can also be customized and reported on to help determine how efficient teams are at solving their customer’s problems. This helps managers understand how issues or cases are spread across team members, if their teams are meeting business goals, and where improvements may need to be made.

Financial reporting

Accounting and finance teams can track and visualize actuals reporting, invoice management, project spending, and budgets with Jira data in Power BI. Many times these teams or people aren’t Jira users. Connecting these two platforms provides safe and reliable access to Jira data without the need to pull data manually or request it from a Jira admin.

Resource utilization reporting

Project managers use Jira data in Power BI to display planned efforts vs actual efforts for teams, the allocation of users across projects, workloads, and more. Project managers can easily preview and share this information to track progress and pivot efforts or resources as needed.

Program or Project status updates

Program and project managers can use Power BI reports and dashboards to create visuals for regular status update meetings. These types of reports can be particularly useful for executive reporting, monthly or quarterly reviews, board meetings, and more.

Time management reporting

Many teams can use time management reports that are created from or include Jira data in Power BI. Invoice dashboards can display how much time is spent on an epic, project, or program or how much time is spent across development or support team efforts. This example is useful for teams like finance, operations, support, engineering, and more.

While these are the most common use cases, others include sprint tracking and tracking data across projects. You can also visualize Jira data alongside data from other sources to build custom reports for expanded comparison and data analysis.

Set up your Jira and Power BI connection in 3 steps

Integrating your Jira instance with Power BI is simple and only needs to be done once. Our app, Power BI Connector for Jira, takes a few quick steps to set up and automates the flow of Jira data into Power BI. Here is a quick overview of the step-by-step process:

First, download and install our connector app Power BI Connector for Jira.

Power BI Jira Connector Marketplace Installation Instructions

Create your unique connector URL within your Jira instance to automate the flow of data into Power BI.

Power BI Jira Connector

Open Power BI and add your unique URL — voila, Jira and Power BI are integrated!

Power BI Jira Connector

Once Jira and Power BI are connected, you can hone in on the type of data you’d like to have on the ready for reporting, comparison, and tracking. Spend some time looking through the Jira data fields you’ve chosen to import to understand where this may be useful for current or new dashboards. After you’ve updated the data being pulled into current reports or created anything new, you can schedule automatic refreshes and set up specific reports to be emailed out. For any non-Jira users, you can use the Publish feature to make reports or dashboards accessible when needed.

And there you have it! Integrating your Jira instance with Power BI turns your data into clear, actionable insights that empower data-driven decisions. If a solution like Power BI Connector for Jira seems useful for your team, head over to the Atlassian Marketplace and try it for free for 30 days.

Interested in a connecter app for other analytics platforms? Check out Tableau Connector Pro for Jira to integrate your Jira data with Tableau.

Connect Jira to Power BI to report and visualize SLA times, resource utilization, project status, and more

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