Display custom charts and quick tables on your dashboard

A key feature of Jira dashboards is the ability to display your data through statistics and charts for effective, at-a-glance reporting. This article demonstrates a related feature available in Rich Filters for Jira Dashboards, namely the Rich Filter Flexi Charts gadget. This allows you to generate detailed charts on your dashboard and display quick tables on the fly.

Prerequisites

• A basic understanding of Jira dashboards and rich filters, as explained in Get started with Rich Filters for Jira Dashboards.

Final result for this tutorial

When you've worked through all the steps in this tutorial, you should have a dashboard that contains two flexi chart gadgets:

• One containing a donut chart showing the number of story points-worth of issues reported by each reporter.
• One containing a stacked bar chart showing resolved and unresolved issues for each priority.

The two flexi chart gadgets can be seen on the right of the image below, and are the focus of this tutorial. The gadgets on the left (Rich Filter Controller and Rich Filter Results) have already been covered in previous tutorials.

Both flexi chart gadgets can also display quick tables that provide details of the data summarized in the charts: these are accessed by clicking the Show table button in the bottom-right corner of the flexi chart gadgets. The below image shows an example:

Rich filter and dashboard basic setup

In this section, you'll set up a basic rich filter and dashboard to work with.

1. If you've already worked through other tutorials in this series, you can base any gadgets you create while following this article on a previously-created rich filter. Check that you have one available to use (find existing rich filters under Apps > Rich Filters). If not, follow the instructions in Get started with Rich Filters for Jira Dashboards to create a new rich filter before continuing.
2. Create a new dashboard (Dashboards > Create dashboard).
3. Make sure it is using the Left sidebar layout. We'll put our charts in the right-hand column, as they benefit from having more display space than other gadget types. You can set this using the Change layout menu at the top of the dashboard.

Your first flexi chart

Rich Filter Flexi Charts gadgets allow you to show one-dimensional charts (single statistic type) or two-dimensional charts (two statistic types), with data points of your choice displayed for each value.

Let's create a simple one-dimensional chart that shows us the story points for each reporter.

1. Add a Rich Filter Flexi Charts gadget to your dashboard (Create a simple dashboard explains how to add gadgets).
2. Move the gadget to the right-hand column of your dashboard by dragging and dropping it.
3. There are several fields you should configure in the gadget config form (for the moment we'll leave the Chart type as the default Donut type):
   1. Rich filter: Set this to your rich filter.
      
   2. Breakdown by > Statistic type: We'll get this chart to show a breakdown by reporters, so in the Statistic type dropdown, select Reporter.
      
   3. Value: For each reporter, let's show the number of story points' worth of issues they have reported. Choose Story Points.
4. Your gadget config form should look like the following image. Check it is correct, then click Submit.
   
   
   
   
5. Your Rich Filter Flexi Charts gadget should look like the following image.
   
   
   

Manipulate your chart display

If you want to change the default display, there are a few options in the Rich Filter Flexi Charts gadget config form to play with.

1. Go back into your Rich Filter Flexi Charts gadget config form (see Easier configuration with the Rich filter menu).
   
2. We haven't discussed the following options previously. Update them as described below:
   1. Filter out None: If this option is selected, issues with the statistic type empty won't be included in the chart (in the case of Reporter this may have no effect, as empty values are unlikely). Check this box if you wish.
      
   2. Sort by: There are different values available in this dropdown, depending on the chosen statistic type. Select the Total option. This will sort the chart data in descending order by the number of story points, rather than ascending reporter name alphabetical order. In the case of donut/pie charts, the data runs clockwise from the top.
      
   3. Reverse sort order: reverses the default sort order of the option chosen in Sort by. In this case, checking the box would sort the chart data in ascending order by the number of story points. We've kept the box unchecked.
      
3. Your config form should look like the following image. Check they are correct, then click Submit.
   
   
   
   
4. You should end up with a different display in your chart gadget. Feel free to play around with these settings until you get a display that you are happy with.
   
   
   
   

5.  Go back into your gadget config form and look at the different chart types available in the Chart type dropdown. You'll see that the Rich Filter Flexi Charts gadget provides a variety of one- and two-dimensional charts to cover all your needs.

One-dimensional chart types:

• Donut
• Pie
• Gauge
• Bar
• Line
• Treemap
• Word cloud

Two-dimensional chart types

• Clustered bar
• Stacked bar
• Multi-line

6. Try out a few different types of one-dimensional chart, to see what the variety looks like.

Chart interactive features

The different chart types all have interactive features. For example:

• You can hover over the columns/slices to display exact values as tooltips. This can be especially useful in cases such as donut charts when the gadget display is too narrow to show the labels seen in previous screenshots.
• You can click the values or their bars/slices to load up lists of all the associated issues in a separate tab.
  
  

Create two-dimensional charts

Let's create a two-dimensional chart. In this case, we'll create a stacked bar graph that shows us the number of resolved and unresolved issues for each different priority.

1. Add another Rich Filter Flexi Charts gadget to your dashboard (Create a simple dashboard explains how to add gadgets).
2. Move the gadget to the right-hand column of your dashboard by dragging and dropping it. We'll add other features to the left-hand column later on.
3. Set the following field values in the gadget config form:
   1. Rich filter: Set this to the same rich filter that your other flexi chart gadget is based on.
   2. Chart type: Choose Stacked bar.
   3. Primary breakdown > Statistic type: Choose Priority in this dropdown.
   4. Secondary breakdown > Statistic type: choose Resolved / Unresolved in this dropdown.
   5. Value: For each combination of priority and resolved / unresolved, we'll show the number of issues. Choose Issue Count in this dropdown.
4. Your Rich Filter Flexi Charts gadget config form should look like the following image. Check it is correct, then click Submit.
   
   
   
   
5. Your gadget should look like so.
   
   
   

Filter charts using your controller

As you use Rich Filters for Jira Dashboards more, you'll notice how connected everything is. With this in mind, let's look at how you can filter your chart display using a Rich Filter Controller gadget.

1. Add a Rich Filter Controller gadget to your dashboard using the Add a Gadget side panel.
2. Drag and drop it to the left-hand column of the dashboard if it isn't already placed there.
3. In the controller config form, set the Rich filter to the same rich filter that your other gadgets are based on, and click Submit.

If you are using a rich filter from a previous tutorial, you may already have some filters available on your controller. If you created a fresh new rich filter for this tutorial:

• Try creating some static filters, as shown in Add some static filters to your controller.
• Try creating some dynamic filters. You can find out how in Enhance your Jira dashboards with dynamic filters.

Try applying some filters in the controller. Note how they filter issues in both flexi chart gadgets. 

Display quick tables

Flexi charts have quick tables available to provide details of the data summarized in the chart. Quick tables are displayed by clicking the Show table button in the bottom-right corner of the gadget.

1. Click the Show table button to display a tabular representation of your data.
   
   

   Click the Show table button again to hide the quick table.

As with any other table in rich filters, you can sort the data in a quick table by different columns by clicking the column headings. Click a heading multiple times to toggle between ascending and descending order.

Tables generated from two-dimensional charts can be sorted by ascending and descending column values, row values, and totals, by clicking the arrow controls in the relevant column and row headings.

Further exercises

In order to add further power to the dashboard, in our final example we added a Rich Filter Results gadget in the left-hand column, below the Rich Filter Controller gadget, based on the same rich filter (Create a simple dashboard explains how to do this). To complete the tutorial, we'd like you to complete this step on your own dashboard.

Your dashboard should look like this:

As a further exercise, we also encourage you to explore using smart filters in flexi charts. Smart filters allow you to filter and group your issues using configurable smart clauses based on JQL and also have the advantage that, when defined, they become available for use in other places. This includes statistic types in statistics and charts, and columns in views. Use our Smart filters in statistics and charts exercise as a starting point, and try adding a smart filter as a statistic type in a new flexi chart gadget.

Next steps

This is the last topic in our Fundamentals article series. Each one works as a standalone topic, so you can jump to specific topics of interest if you missed any, or want to revisit ones you've already covered.

You can use the rich filter you created in this article as a starting point for other tutorials.