Customizing Gantt templates

Customized Gantt templates come in handy, especially when you use a particular template frequently and do not want to define the Column View before each data export. Now, you can easily prepare templates tailored to your business needs and enjoy exporting data with a few clicks.

Once you prepare and upload your own templates, they will be available to select from the drop-down menu. 

XLSX templates

To prepare your own xlsx template, you need to perform the following steps:

1. Open an xlsx file. 
2. Complete the file by providing the names of imported fields in the first row (more about supported fields can be found below).
3. Upload your template (for further instructions, refer here). 

The procedure works for odt and csv files as well. 

Supported fields

Customized templates can contain the fields presented below:

1. Global fields supported by BigPicture such as "Assignee", "Summary", "Start Date", "End Date", "Status", "Story Points", etc. 
2. System fields from Jira that need to follow the style name: #BT.task.<fieldname>
   

   You can find a list of Jira system fields in Jira Administration > Issues > System fields. Let's have a closer look at a few examples:

   System field in Jira	Style name to use in xlsx templates
   Description	#BT.task.description
   Summary	#BT.task.summary
   Issue Type	#BT.task.issueType
   Labels	#BT.task.labels
   Assignee	#BT.task.assignee
   Due Date	#BT.task.dueDate

   
   

3. Custom fields from Jira that need to follow the style name: #BT.task.customfield_<id>
   You can find detailed instructions on how to find custom fields in Jira below.

Date and format

For Jira fields, you can also format dates by adding the following modifiers:

• $yyyy-MM-dd (-> 2021-12-31)
• $dd-MM-yyyy (-> 31-12-2021)
• $MMM/dd/yyyy (-> Dec/31/2021)

As an example, you want the "Due Date" system field from Jira to be exported and presented in the "Dec/31/2021" format. To achieve that, you should create such a field:

Custom fields

There are several types of custom fields:

• Number
• Select List (multiple choice)
• Select List (single choice)
• User Picker (single line)
• User Picker (multiple choice)
• Date Picker
• Labels
• Text Field (multi-line)
• Text Field (single line)

Firstly, you need to find out how a given field is named in your Jira instance - the field ID is used for this. To do so, go to Jira Administration > Issues > Custom Fields:

To obtain the ID, you need to right-click a custom field on your Jira issue screen and hit Inspect Element - the ID will be clearly shown as a numerical value (10400 as an example below for field 123):

Additional information

1. Do not add empty columns in the middle of the template. When an empty column is recognized, the fields provided after this column will not be exported. 
2. If a field name cannot be found, BigTemplate will leave such a column empty. 
3. The exported date format reflects the date format that is set in Jira. 
4. Field names provided in the template will be replaced with their real names after export. 
5. BigTemplate is not case-sensitive when exporting data so global field names supported by BigPicture can contain uppercase or lowercase characters. 
6. In addition to the field names you enter in the template, BigTemplate always adds 5 default columns to the exported file. These are "Key", "Parent Row", "Issue Type", "Summary", and "Link". 

Parent Row

In the exported file, the "Parent Row" column is the Excel row in which the parent of the task is.

The exported file presented above reflects the structure in BigPicture. 

Link

The "Link" field is a cell with dependencies/links, for example, 16FS-1 or 21SS+1, where:
16, 21 - pointer to Excel's row with the linked task;
FS, SS - link type:

• FS - finish to start;
• SS - start to start;
• FF - finish to finish;
• SF - start to finish.
• -1/+1 - link lag in days.

In this case:

• The target of a link is in row 33
• Start to finish link
• 0 lag days

The "Link" cell in Excel:

The structure in BigPicture:

Examples

XLSX templates

The exemplary template presented below consists of three different types of field names:

1. Custom fields from Jira.
2. Global fields supported by BigPicture (BigTemplate is not case-sensitive so the "suMMarY" field will be found).
3. System fields from Jira where one of them has the "$yyyy-MM-dd" date modifier added. 

When the customized template is ready, you need to upload it.

After exporting data using the above template, we receive the following file:

1. Custom fields from Jira have been recognized, renamed, and completed.
2. Global fields supported by BigPicture have been recognized and completed. 
3. System fields from Jira have been recognized, renamed, and completed (renaming fields with date modifiers is not supported yet).
4. The "Key", "Parent Row", "Issue Type", "Summary", and "Link" fields are added by default to each exported file. 

CSV templates

The rule for creating csv templates is the same as for xlsx templates. In the text editor, field names should be separated by commas. When ready, upload your template. 

The exported file looks like this in the text editor:

When you open the exported file in the spreadsheet, you will see the following view: