Project issues with details

eazyBI for Jira

What are properties?

Properties contain descriptive information about a dimension member and this information is visible only if the dimension member itself is selected in the report. In other words, issue properties show values only if issues are selected in the report; project properties show values only if projects are selected in the report; sprint properties show values only if sprints are selected in the report; and so on. 

How to find properties?

You can find all properties in the Measures. Issue properties are in the section “Issue properties”; Sprint properties can be found in the “Agile” section. Other dimension members' properties are in the “Other properties” section.

While properties are included in the Measures, properties have a specific naming pattern and use to distinguish a property from a measure. Each property starts with the dimension member name (in a singular form) and then the name of the field in Jira. Examples: Issue Created date, Issue Story Points, Issue status, Issue labels; Project lead; Sprint actual start date, Sprint goal. 

More advanced option how to recognize the property: if you open property in formula editor, you should see in the formula that the field is retrieved with Get() function, like, for Issue creation date the calculation formula is [Issue].CurrentHierarchyMember.Get('Created at'). Some properties' calculation formulas can be more complex, but the Get() will be also there.

The most frequently used properties are issue properties. Issue properties in the report show information as it is visible in the Jira issue screen: issue creation date, assignee, status, priority, story points, sprints, versions, etc.

When to use and do not use properties?

Properties have the following functions:

• to display descriptive information about issues when the issue is in the report rows.
• to filter reports with lists of issues (or lists of sprints, and projects…).
• to filter members in the calculation formulas if the calculation is done at the member level. For instance, if the calculation iterates through all issues using Descendants() or DescendantsSet() functions, then filtering issues by properties first when the Filter() function is applied is a good way to optimize the calculation. 

Properties are not for doing the following:

• to group issues by them; for that, use the corresponding dimension instead; for example, to group issues by statuses, use the Status dimension, not the property Issue status.
• to get total values; for that, use the corresponding measure instead; for example, to get the total of story points, use one of the measure Story points created or Story points resolved, not the property Issue Story Points.
• to group issues on a timeline by some date; for that use the corresponding measure and Time dimension instead. For example, to count issues by their due dates, use the Time dimension and measure Issues with the due date, not the property Issue due date.
• to filter reports or calculations if there are no issues.

Issue property values are displayed regardless of whether the issue meets the Page filter conditions or not. If the issue is displayed in the report for some reason (for example, [nonempty] is deselected), the property value is displayed. Therefore, issue properties are not enough to make report context (e.g., apply Page filters).

There is a saying: if an issue is a dog, then the issue property is the dog's tail; you can see the tail if the dog itself is visible. If there is no dog, there is no tail. When you select issue properties in the report (or use in the calculation formula), ensure that you have issues in the report (or in the calculation formula); 
when selecting project properties, ensure that you have projects in the report; etc. 
Otherwise, the property values become empty.

Example of the report with issue properties

See example report with selected properties:

In the example report:

• Issue Story points (property) show values for issues only; Story points created (measure) and Story points resolved (measure) show value for each issue as well as the total for the whole project. 
• Issue Story points (property) show values for all displayed issues; Story points created (measure) show value for issues that are created in the previous year (selected period from the Time dimension),  Story points resolved (measure) shows values only for resolved issues, moreover, which were resolved during the previous year (because of the Time period selection). 
• All issues in this report are resolved. While the Issue resolution date (property) is visible for all issues, measures that are related to resolved issues - Issues resolved (measure) and Story points resolved (measure) - have values only for issues that meet all the Page filter selection. For example, select Previous year from Time dimension, Done status from Status dimension, and Low from Priority dimension, and measure values are calculated just from those issues.

You can play around with this report and see how the report changes.