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, install a headless web browser on all Jira Data Center nodes or use a remote headless browser on a separate node. eazyBI will use the headless browser 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.

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:

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

SUSE

The mscorefonts are available only for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15

sudo zypper addrepo https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:olh/SLE_15/home:olh.repo
sudo zypper install msttcore-fonts

Alternatively, you can install Liberation fonts, as they are very close to mscorefonts.

sudo zypper install liberation-fonts

Install a headless browser on the server

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

Linux

Install the google-chrome-stable package or chromium on your server. Here are examples of how to do it on different Linux distributions.

Ubuntu

For the x86_64 architecture, install the latest google-chrome-stable  package.

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 the Google Chrome package, then you can install Chromium as an alternative. Use this Personal Package Archive (PPA) which contains the chromium  package.

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

RedHat

Enable the 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:

sudo yum install google-chrome-stable

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and OpenSUSE

You can install the google-chrome-stable package on SLES 15 or OpenSUSE Leap 15. For the x86_64  architecture use:

sudo zypper addrepo http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/rpm/stable/x86_64 Google-Chrome
wget https://dl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub
sudo rpm --import linux_signing_key.pub && rm -f linux_signing_key.pub
sudo zypper install google-chrome-stable

If you have an older SLES or OpenSUSE version or if you do not want to use the Google Chrome package, then install Chromium as an alternative.

On SUSE Linux Enterprise, use the SUSE Package Hub to install the package. For exampe, for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP5 on x86_64 architecture use the following (change the version and architecture as needed):

sudo SUSEConnect -p PackageHub/12.5/x86_64
sudo zypper install chromium

On OpenSUSE, install using:

sudo zypper install chromium

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, just download and install Google Chrome for macOS. Please ensure that you have version 62 or later.

Use a remote headless browser

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

1. Ensure the remote instance you use for the headless browser 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 / Chromium.
2. Setup and configure Docker, and then run the headless browser 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 a headless browser, disable and re-enable the eazyBI app from Jira Administration → Manage Add-ons.

During startup, eazyBI detects installed Google Chrome or Chromium and starts using 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.

To debug the PDF export timeouts, please note that the export timeout value is calculated as "mondrian.rolap.queryTimeout" parameter (60 seconds by default) + 30 seconds.