topic Re: JIRA Connector in Dev Space

JIRA Connector

Coxta45 — Wed, 25 Oct 2017 05:51:59 GMT

JIRA Connector (Macro)

Public Gallery Link: https://gallery.alteryx.com/#!app/JIRA-Connector/58d87c2feffc2a0dd0b5ed8f

I've published a JIRA Connector to the public gallery and hope it will be useful for those using JIRA that are looking for a way to quickly download issues for their JIRA projects. It's pretty straightforward, but here's a preview and quick guide:

30 Second Preview:

Installation & Configuration

Download and import to your Macros folder

As long as your macro folder has been mapped (Options -> User Settings -> Edit User Settings -> Macros), you should find the JIRA Connector tool in the Connectors category on the tool palette the next time you open Alteryx.

Tool Configuration

3 Tabs: Site & Login, Project & Issues, Fields

Site & Login

Enter the URL for your JIRA site along with your username and password. Email logins will work, but your actual username is preferable because it enables the "Only My Issues" option to work (next tab).

Project & Issues

You'll need to run the workflow at least once with the "Refresh Project List" option selected before being able to use the "Download Issues" option. This loads a list of available JIRA projects that will show in the dropdown under the Download Issues option on subsequent runs.

Once an available project list has loaded, you can select a project to download issues from. You'll also notice some options for filtering issues that belong to yourself or another specific assignee. You can also paginate through large result sets in 1,000 record increments.

Fields

Lastly, select one of three options for returned fields and parsing methods.

Standard - Formatted
- Includes the commonly used JIRA system fields and utilizes more practical parsing and formatting methods
Standard - Raw
- Includes all JIRA system fields and transposes/flattens multi-dimensional arrays (to a certain extent/depth)
- Can yield wide results
The Kitchen Sink
- Includes all system fields, as well as custom fields
- Parsed results for this option will likely be very wide and cumbersome

Output

Summary (S) - a brief summary of the results (record counts, etc.)

Raw JSON (J) - direct JSON response from the JIRA REST API

Parsed Results (P) - the parsed results

That's it! Once again, I hope this will be useful and look forward to getting some decent feedback. I've only been able to test this on our company's [cloud hosted] JIRA projects and honestly have no idea if it will work for private server hosted JIRA environments.

Please feel free to leave feedback and/or report any runtime errors below. I'll do my best to publish new versions to the gallery with essential fixes.

Taylor Cox

Re: JIRA Connector

zdavis — Mon, 03 Apr 2017 22:39:59 GMT

Hello,

I love this macro - thank you for creating and posting it!

I do have a question. Is there a way to boost the results past 1000, or is this a function of the API? My company is using JIRA heavily to manage large projects and single projects have over 1k tickets presently, so I'm limited in my output. Is this adjustable?

One piece of possible feedback for the future: under Project Issues, "Only My Issues" returns just those assigned to me. It would be helpful if this could also return those that I created, or am watching.

Thank you! I really appreciate it.

Re: JIRA Connector

Coxta45 — Tue, 04 Apr 2017 16:59:03 GMT

@zdavis,

Thanks for the kudos, I'm glad you like the connector! Also, the feedback is much appreciated as I was hoping for ideas for improvement, etc.

I've published Version 3, which features a couple of minor enhancements that address the question and suggestion that you made.

"Is there a way to boost the results past 1000, or is this a function of the API?"

- The JIRA API record limits will vary based on an installation's config property setting. For cloud instances, I don't believe this can be changed without opening a JIRA service ticket. Our company's cloud instance, for example, limits # of results to 1,000 for the API endpoint being used in the connector (/rest/api/latest/search). However, I upped the limit in the connector to 5,000 in the chance that an install allows more. Lastly, check out the example for pagination (bottom) - this will help in understanding how you can pull the remaining issues if you have more than 1,000 (or whatever your limit may be).

"One piece of possible feedback for the future: under Project Issues, "Only My Issues" returns just those assigned to me. It would be helpful if this could also return those that I created, or am watching."

- I added 2 options under "Only My Issues". One which returns those assigned to you, and one which returns those reported by you. I'm not sure yet how to query those that you're watching...

Updated Config

I'm not yet sure how to execute "OR" statements in a POST array via JQL - so here's how you could get a list of any issues that are either assigned to you OR reported by you.

Pagination Example

Hope this helps!

Re: JIRA Connector

zdavis — Tue, 04 Apr 2017 18:57:26 GMT

Wow- that's awesome. Thank you so much for taking the time to make an update, add notations, and enlist my comments in the update. Fantastic tool, and thanks for the great support also!!

Re: JIRA Connector

Coxta45 — Tue, 04 Apr 2017 20:16:47 GMT

@zdavis, No problem! Always glad to help :-)

Re: JIRA Connector

jyeh — Wed, 16 Aug 2017 15:19:35 GMT

Thanks Taylor for sharing the connector.

I am currently implementing a worfklow to extract JIRA data. In our current environment, the workflow will return a 302 code, so the project list will not refresh and error out. One possible solution is to open the Jira Connector macro and change the Message tool (the one after the download tool) within the Get Projects, Standard - Formatted, and Kitchen Sink or Standard Raw containers (after enabling it) from:

Message Type: Error - And Stop Passing Records Through This Tool

Message Type: Warning

This will allow the workflow to continue processing and ignore the 302 error code and refresh the project list.

Thanks again for the connector!

Re: JIRA Connector

Coxta45 — Wed, 16 Aug 2017 16:32:14 GMT

@jyeh,

Thanks for the feedback, this is definitely useful information. I'm currently using the new HTML/JavaScript SDK to develop a new version of this tool that should be a bit easier to use. I'll be sure to incorporate some more solid error handling - again, thanks for the feedback!

Re: JIRA Connector

jyeh — Wed, 16 Aug 2017 19:20:25 GMT

Another pagination solution would be something like the following:

Use the JIRA Connector to get the limit and total issues --> Auto Field --> Generate Rows (see settings on screenshot) --> formula to fix initialization row --> Next JIRA Macro to overwrite the "Limit" and "Starting With" values. Add the Unique ID tool as a safety measure (Pending).

Parent WorkflowMacro

Thanks

Re: JIRA Connector

Coxta45 — Wed, 16 Aug 2017 20:06:03 GMT

Very cool!

I'm actually thinking about integrating this within the Jira Connector itself....

For instance, using similar logic, I would add an optional input to the JIRA Connector that would take a "Next Call" field. The "Summary" output from the connector would include this "Next Call" field with a pre-compiled call (JSON array) that would be used for the next call to the JIRA API. This would allow the user to simply chain the JIRA Connectors together using the summary outputs to (optional) inputs and union each of the "Parsed" outputs.

Another idea would include doing this within a JIRA "Paginator" Macro - which would simply be an iterative macro that executes the aforementioned logic until all calls have been made - or even let the user specify the number of subsequent pages to load. The beauty of this is limiting the number of tools required to pull data to 2...

However, in the spirit of minimizing work and canvas space utilization, I'll probably move the Paginator macro into the connector itself also, while providing the options in the macro interface for the number of pages (or all) to return. And viola! One tool, all results!

Re: JIRA Connector

jyeh — Wed, 16 Aug 2017 20:22:50 GMT

Thanks for the insight. I am not sure that I followed the chained approach implementation. It would be nice to have the one tool / all results solution though.

The all results would be good to have to provide an initial load. To keep things in sync, it would be useful to include date filters, so the user can specify the date range and provide change data capture capabilities. For example, similar to the assignee comment above include "updated >%3D -1d" to the filter URL, so only updated issues for the last day would be part of the result set. This would reduce the volume of data and allow the user to process the updates/new issues.

Re: JIRA Connector

jimmyly89 — Mon, 28 Aug 2017 00:10:56 GMT

I love this connector as well - but unfortunately we've been able to use this in our organisation becasue we use Kerberos authentication with our JIRA instance.

We've tested it without the Kerberos authentication and it works, so we've narrowed down the problem, is there anyway to have this connector work with a JIRA instance sitting behind Kerberos authentication?

Re: JIRA Connector

Kishan — Thu, 19 Oct 2017 00:32:28 GMT

Excellent tool... Thanks for sharing this with us

Re: JIRA Connector

Coxta45 — Fri, 27 Oct 2017 14:20:54 GMT

@jimmyly89,

Currently the connector is using basic authentication - requests to the api simply send an Authetication header with the encrypted credentials. My guess (and this is a guess) is that Kerberos authentication might require using JIRA's REST API OAuth Authentication Method, which is substantially more involved and also requires the configuration of Application Links within your JIRA admin, as well.

Having said that, I am currently working on the development of new JIRA connectors (one for input, another for output), using the new HTML/JavaScript SDK, and will be doing my best to include 2 authentication methods: a "Basic" and "Developer" login option, where the "Developer" option will use the OAuth methods, assuming you have configured the application links properly (visit link above for documention and/or more info on this). I can't make any promises for the OAuth method at this point simply because I haven't been able to test it yet and honestly have no idea what obstacles I may encounter. Again, I will do my best to make it happen and hopefully it will remediate the Kerberos login issue.

p.s. - Now would be a great time to suggest any pertinent, burning, suggestions for improvements and/or additional cpabilities within the connector :-)

Taylor

Re: JIRA Connector

Saltygunner — Wed, 01 Nov 2017 14:56:12 GMT

I'm loving the connector - thank you for taking the time to put this together. It's been extremely helpful so far. I agree with above statements that being able to enter a data range would be a nice to have. Another hope is to be able to address the 50 record limit that Jira has imposed by building pagination into the connector. I'm struggling to be able to pull a history of all the tickets we have in a given project, and yes I've used some of the suggestions mentioned in this thread (I'm still a bit of a newbie)

Re: JIRA Connector

Coxta45 — Wed, 01 Nov 2017 15:59:55 GMT

@Saltygunner thanks for the feedback and I'm glad to hear that you've found it to be useful. Pagination, and/or the ability to "chain" the calls behind the scenes until all, or a much higher limit, of the issues are retreived is probably the #1 suggestion at this point for the new connector. I'll make sure it's feature #1 on the changelog :-)

Re: JIRA Connector

prerna — Mon, 06 Nov 2017 18:06:03 GMT

Is there a ways to get CSV file Attachment file from issue in jira to Alteryx.

Re: JIRA Connector

Coxta45 — Mon, 06 Nov 2017 19:40:20 GMT

@prerna - while I wouldn't dare try to download the attachments as part of the connector (for hopefully obvious reasons), I'll look in to including attachment locations/endpoints as a field in the output. You could then either get them manually or do some subsequent magic with the download tool

Re: JIRA Connector

prerna — Mon, 06 Nov 2017 20:56:33 GMT

I have a csv file in my jira issue as a attachment, which I want in Alteryx for data filtering. So, is there a way Alteryx and get those file from jira to Alteryx. Not manually

Re: JIRA Connector

Coxta45 — Mon, 06 Nov 2017 22:24:37 GMT

@prerna - again, you'll have to get the attachment info for said issue and then use the download tool's GET/FTP method to grab those attachments. This is not something that I'd ever have any interest in building in to a connector but would rather give the user the necessary ammunition to put "Self-Service" analytics to use.

Either some manual work wil be required OR I think that you'll find this to be a bit cumbersome for many reasons...

For starters, keep in mind....

1) attachments will likely be of different types (excel, word/text, pdf, images, etc...)

2) you don't know sheet names (for excel files) and can't assume they're all the same
3) in order to try any automation, the aforementioned attachments would require some pretty reliable consistency and/or your JIRA issues would need to be precisely filtered to only those with that static criteria before trying to download attachments, much less do anything with them thereafter
4) lastly, if you do get to that point, I'd encourage you make sure you're doing some "clean-up" along the way so that you don't just continue downloading and saving oodles of copies of attachments...your server admins will thank you, as well, if you're scheduling this or running in a gallery

I have attached an example that should get you started. It currently downloads and saves the attachments for a task to the [Engine.TempFilePath] directory with a file name of [jira-issue-key] + [attachment-name]. It will require some tweaking to run and you'll need to understand how Basic Authentication works with the JIRA API. Edit the text input with your applicable parameters using a sample jira task. When you have it working, you can replace the text input with your results from the JIRA connector and move the username, password, and url parameters to the formula tool. Lastly, you can save the attachments wherever you want...but again, be cognizant of the fact that you could fill up some disk space in a hurry if you're pulling large attachments or pulling them from hundreds/thousands of jira tasks.

Re: JIRA Connector

amichel — Wed, 08 Nov 2017 09:12:25 GMT

First off, thank you for creating the JIRA connector! It's a fantastic tool :)

Today, the connector allows us to read data. Will you be making an enhancement to write to JIRA? I'm trying to automate our ticket process and would love to create JIRA stories dynamically (via the tool) when certain conditions are met? For example, if a data review fails, we need to a create a JIRA story with any necessary details to have our technical team investigate further. Thanks!