Export to PDF

eazyBI for Jira eazyBI for Confluence

Overview

If you would like to export reports or dashboard pages to PDF or send regular emails with dashboards as PDF attachments, you need to install the headless Google Chrome browser on all nodes in Jira Data Center or Use remote Google Chrome. eazyBI will use Google Chrome on the server to convert eazyBI web pages to PDF files.

Install Microsoft's Core Fonts

To get the best-looking PDF export, eazyBI needs mscorefonts package.

Linux

Install the mscorefonts package on your server. Here is an example of how to do it on Ubuntu and RedHat.

Ubuntu

The mscorefonts package is available in the main repository:

sudo apt install ttf-mscorefonts-installer

RedHat

The mscorefonts package should be installed from its home page as described there.

Please run the following commands if mscorefonts package homepage instructions failed:

yum install curl xorg-x11-font-utils fontconfig
rpm -i https://www.cabextract.org.uk/cabextract-1.9.1-1.i386.rpm
rpm -i https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/mscorefonts2/rpms/msttcore-fonts-installer-2.6-1.noarch.rpm

SuSe

# Installing mstt fonts
sudo zypper install msttcore-fonts 

Install Google Chrome on the server

Install the headless Google Chrome browser on all nodes in Jira Data Center.

Linux

Install the google-chrome-stable package on your server. Here are examples of how to do it on Ubuntu and RedHat.

Ubuntu

For x86_64 architecture you can install the latest package of Google Chrome.

wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb
sudo apt install ./google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb

If you are using aarch64 architecture or do not want to use Google Chrome for some reason, you can install Chromium as an alternative using this ppa, as Ubuntu does not package Chromium.

sudo apt install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xtradeb/apps -y
sudo apt update
sudo apt install chromium

RedHat

Enable Google YUM repository:

cat << EOF > /etc/yum.repos.d/google-chrome.repo
[google-chrome]
name=google-chrome - \$basearch
baseurl=http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/rpm/stable/\$basearch
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub
EOF

Install the package:

yum install google-chrome-stable

SuSe

# Installing chrome
sudo zypper addrepo http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/rpm/stable/x86_64 Google-Chrome
sudo zypper refresh
wget https://dl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub
sudo rpm --import linux_signing_key.pub
# There could be an error about missing dependency libvulkan, proceed installation without it.
sudo zypper install --no-confirm google-chrome-stable

Windows

Download and install Google Chrome for Windows. Please ensure that you have version 62 or later.

As an alternative on the Windows server, the Microsoft Edge 79 (or newer; see https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/edge) can be used instead of Google Chrome. In such a case, specify the location of the msedge.exe file as described in the troubleshooting section below.

macOS

If you have your local Jira server on macOS, then also just download and install Google Chrome for macOS. Please ensure that you have version 62 or later.

Use remote Google Chrome

Alternatively, you can use a remotely running Google Chrome browser to convert eazyBI web pages to PDF files. Here is a configuration example of remotely running Google Chrome in a Docker container:

1. Ensure the remote instance you use for Google Chrome can be accessed from your Jira Data Center instances (and vice versa), specifically on a chosen <REMOTE_INSTANCE_PORT>. The commonly used value is 9222, a default value for Google Chrome.
2. Setup and configure Docker, and then run the Google Chrome container on the remote instance as follows:
   

   docker run -it --rm -p=0.0.0.0:<REMOTE_INSTANCE_PORT>:9222 --name=chrome-headless -v /tmp/chromedata/:/data alpeware/chrome-headless-trunk

   
   Please use the icalialabs/chromium:latest image for your setup if you are operating on an arm64 architecture.
3. Open the eazyBI advanced settings (System administration → Settings → Advanced Settings) and enter these settings:
   

   [google_chrome.remote]
   host = "<REMOTE_INSTANCE_IP>"
   port = <REMOTE_INSTANCE_PORT>
   allow_insecure = true # for skipping SSL verification if necessary

4. If your Jira base URL has not been configured with a publicly available hostname, please add the base_url option:
   

   [google_chrome.remote]
   ...
   base_url = "<JIRA_HOSTNAME>:<JIRA_PORT>" # only for instances without publicly available hostname

Restart eazyBI

After you have installed Google Chrome, disable and re-enable the eazyBI app from Jira Administration → Manage Add-ons.

During the startup, eazyBI will detect installed Google Chrome and will start to use it for PDF exports. Please visit any dashboard page and try to export it to PDF.

Troubleshooting

If you see an error message "Google Chrome is not found on the server" then you can try to specify the path to it manually via advanced settings:

[google_chrome]
location = "/usr/bin/google-chrome"

If you have any problems with PDF export after Google Chrome is installed, then check:

• System Administration / System Events page and see if you have any errors there.
• Check eazybi-web.log file from the Troubleshooting page.

Please download eazyBI log files from the Troubleshooting page and send them to eazyBI support if you need help with solving PDF export problems.

If you see an error message Unable to connect [localhost:9250] then it probably means that Google Chrome failed to start.

• It could fail to start if you are trying to start the process using user root, try to use a different user.
• It could fail to start if you are using Docker, then you can override the default security profile with  --security-opt seccomp=unconfined please check Docker docs for more information on security profiles.