July 1, 2021

Jira: Global Dashboard Filter

In Jira Dashboards there is no possibility to apply a filter over all Dashboards elements aka. gadgets.
I present here a workaround/ best practice to provide what I call a global filter to a Jira Dashboard.

Current pain

Currently in Jira Dashboards you can not apply a filter to all gadgets. If you want to do so, you have to edit each gadget configuration one by one and change the filter behind each.

I like to make use of such possibility for example to zoom in for one project or one customer but reusing a generic dashboard. Or within a project to adapt the time range e.g. till current release.

That such a trivial feature is missing is quite a big pain and why dashboards are better handled in other more powerful BI tools like for example Microsoft PowerBI which provide such functionality and flexibility out of the box.

There are some Add-ons to fill this gap (Rich Filters, Custom Charts, Quick Filters, EasyBI,...) but they come with some extra cost.

Best practice / Workaround

For circumventing this missing feature I recommend the following best practice when setting up your Jira Dashboard.

For each gadget that provides a filter behind, define your filter with a combination like
(filter = "Quick Filter") and (<your gadget specific filter>)
The "Quick Filter" is the name of the global filter you want to apply to all elements in your dashboard.
(you can choose another name). 
You can alternatively also filter using the filter Id. (See Jira Advanced Search doc - section Filter)
Don't forget to share this filter, when sharing the dashboard.

If you want then to change the global filter behind this dashboard, you simply have to edit this "Quick Filter" one time and it will apply to the whole dashboard.

This is a best practice you need to think about from the beginning of your dashboard setup.
You can also implement it a posteriori: it will be a one-time effort to set up compared to adapting the dashboard each time you want to customize it.

You might also want to add several layers of global filters e,g, one for the project(s)/ customer(s) and one for the time range.

See also

Jira to PowerBi (Improved version)

Battle of the Apps: Rich Filters versus Custom Charts for Jira and Confluence

Quick Filters for Jira Dashboards | codefortynine GmbH

Solved: Is it possible to nest a filter inside another JQL...

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