I'm looking for some help designing a better summary report. Right now we publish and send everything (execution% by modules, defects etc) in an excel and I was hoping if we could use that excel data to generate a live dashboard that would be accessible by a URL.
To add, the execution data comes from QTest and defects from JIRA. At this point we are even ok with filling data in excel manually and using that as a source for any reporting tool.
If a free tool is available, even more better.
Any leads, helps, feedback is appreciated.
Thanks,
MD
Sounds like you need Microsoft's Power BI. We've done a lot of reporting from JIRA using this free tool (Desktop). If you need to share it with others "real time", you'll prefer the online experience for about $10/user/month. But if you're looking to stay "free", you can simply share the Power BI file with your stakeholders.
I recommend AGAINST using the already built in JIRA APP. It seems to want to pull back all your issues. Instead, use a REST API Call like this:
https://domain/rest/api/2/search?jql=filter=22605&fields=id,key,summary,description
If you get more issues back than your Issue Search is configured for, the pagination can be a little tricky. Also multiple values in a custom field need special handling.
Or if you're on premise and know your JIRA DB, direct SQL is an efficient way to go.
We use both mechanisms... (REST and SQL). SQL let us add logic in the view of the data that JIRA itself doesn't report on easily. (Parent-Child-subchild relationships and roll up of effort, story points, etc)
The best part of the Power BI solution is you should be able to integrate the data from JIRA and your test tool. (We pull from JIRA and our time tracking system).
Related
I am working on designing a Power BI dashboard and would require some insights on the source of data. My source of financial data comprises of Kyriba, Bloomberg and ClearWater Analytics. However, no API exists for either of these in Power BI. What’s the best way to pull data from these sources into PowerBI? Manual generation of excel always? Need assistance in understanding the best way to automate this process? Thank You!
unfortunately or maybe fortunately these sites are highly secured, so at the moment there is no connector to these companies' data. But I am quite sure that there are some automatic extraction in csv files or even excel files. Once you have these files you can do everything you want in your Power BI.
Maybe you can contact your IT to check if there is any ftp channel possible to automate the import.
Good luck!
My question is not about a specific code. I am trying to automate a business data governance data flow using a SQL backend. I have put a lot of time searching the internet or reaching out people for the right direction, but unfortunately I have not yet found something promising so I have a lot of hope I would find some people here to save from a big headache.
Assume that we have a flow (semi static/dynamic flow) for our business process. We have different departments owning portions of data. we need to take different actions during the flow such as data entry, data validation, data exportation, approvals, rejections, notes etc and also automatically define deadlines, create reports of overdue tasks and people accountable for them etc.
I guess the data management part would not be extremely difficult, but how to write an application (codes) to run the flow (workflow engine) is where I struggle. Should I use triggers or should I choose to write codes to frequently run queries to push the completed steps to next step, how I can use SQL tables to keep the track of flow etc
If one could give me some hints on this matter, I would be greatly appreciated
I would suggest using the sql server integration services SSIS, you can easily mange the scripts and workflow based on some lookup selections, and also you can schedule SSIS package on timely bases to trigger and do the job.
It's hard task to implement application server on sql server. Also it's will be very vendor depended solution. Best way i think to use sql server as data storage and some application server for business logic over data storage.
I am trying to use API to pull user profile info from Microsoft TFS for work. What they have posted, how many hours they have logged, etc. I have little to no experience coding so right now any Any help will be most appreciated!
You should use the Data Warehouse and Cube to get the reports that you are looking for. There are many ways to manage the data; Reporting Services, Excel, or custom.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff647430.aspx
I often find myself writing one off queries to either answer someone's question or trouble shoot something and I would like to be able to quickly expose the on demand refreshable results of the query graphically so that I can share these results to others without having to go through the process of creating an SSRS report and publishing it to a reporting services server.
I have thought about using excel to do this or maybe running a local SSRS server but both of these options are still labor intensive and I cannot justify the time it would take to do these since no one has officially requested that I turn this data into a report.
The way I see it the business I work for has invested money in me creating these queries that often return potentially useful data that other people in the organization might want but since it isn't exposed in any way and I don't know that this data is something they want and they may not even realize they want this data, the potential value of the query is not realized. I want to increase the company's return on investment on all these one off queries that I and other developers write by exposing their results graphically so that they can be browsed by others and then potentially turned into more formalized SSRS reports if they provide enough value to justify the development of the report.
What is the fastest way for me to take a query and turn it into a refreshable graph of the results set?
Why dont you simply use what you may already have. Excel...you can import data via an ODBC / Oracle / SQL Connection. Get Data..and bam you can run the query and format it right in the spreadsheet and provide sorting etc. All you need to supply is the database name and user name and password to connect to the db.
JonH is right regarding Excel's built in ODBC support, but I have had tons of trouble with this. In my case, the ODBC connection required the client software to be installed so that it could use the encryption methods, etc. Also, even if that were not the case, the user (I believe) would still have to manually install and set up an ODBC connection.
Now if you just want something on your machine to do the queries and refresh them, JohH's solution is great and my caveats are probably irrelavent. But if you want other users to have access, you should consider having a middle-man app (basically a PHP script, assuming a web server is an option for you), that does a query, transforms the results into XML, and outputs it as "report-xyz.xml". You can then point anybody running a newer version of Excel to that address and they can very easily import the data into Excel with no overhead. (basically a kind of web service).
Keep in mind, I don't think you should have a web script that will allow users to make queries to your Database server! You would have some admin page where you make pass the query in and a new xml file with the results gets made. So my idea is also based on the idea that you want to run the same queries over and over without any specifics passed in. (if that were the case, I'd look into just finding a pre-built web services bridge for your database that already has security features built in. Then you could have users make the limited changes allowed.)
All our applications rely on a certain amount of client data i.e. Lookups for comboboxes, users, roles, user-roles...
We currently use a spreadsheet to map the data and generate insert scripts that are then imported into SQL server. The has seemed to work for us but it is very difficult to update and maintain when there are a lot of changes going on (excel is not good at merging data) and it is slow when there is a lot of data.
I am sure this is a common problem and would to hear how others have approached it so we could borrow some ideas and improve our process.
Excel rocks for importing data. You can quickly edit, troubleshoot, and it has lots of options to organize data.
Several developers at my company tried to phase out the Excel data import sheets, but they all failed (one after 6 man-months.) It not always worth the effort to build a specialized data entry web site or windows app. :)
Infopath and SharePoint? (just throwing it out there. It takes some skill to setup well which I would generally doubt that you have at your company)
You will probably have the same issue with any disconnected file based approach. My suggestion would be to build a web page with your lookups that will change and give your customer access to it. Let them maintain the data.
I suggest SharePoint as well. Specifically, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. It's pretty simple to get it up and running and it's included with Windows Server. You can easily create a custom list (you can even import it from Excel) and best of all, you can link it to Outlook and do mail merges on it. Great stuff.