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URL: https://www.cdata.com/kb/tech/jira-cloud-power-query.rst

⇱ Work with Live Jira Data in Power Query

Work with Live Jira Data in Power Query

👁 Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Use CData Connect AI to connect to Jira data and work with live Jira data in Microsoft Power Query.

Power Query is a data transformation and data preparation engine. When paired with CData Connect AI, you get instant, cloud-to-cloud access to Jira data from Power Query. This article shows how to connect to Connect AI from Power Query through Microsoft Excel and get live access to Jira data for transformation and preparation.

CData Connect AI provides a pure SQL, cloud-to-cloud interface for Jira, allowing you to easily integrate with live Jira data in Power Query — without replicating the data. CData Connect AI looks exactly like a SQL Server database to Power Query and uses optimized data processing out of the box to push all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc) directly to Jira, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return Jira data.

About Jira Data Integration

CData simplifies access and integration of live Jira data. Our customers leverage CData connectivity to:

  • Gain bi-directional access to their Jira objects like issues, projects, and workflows.
  • Use SQL stored procedures to perform functional actions like changing issues status, creating custom fields, download or uploading an attachment, modifying or retrieving time tracking settings, and more.
  • Authenticate securely using a variety of methods, including username and password, OAuth, personal access token, API token, Crowd or OKTA SSO, LDAP, and more.

Most users leverage CData solutions to integrate Jira data with their database or data warehouse, whether that's using CData Sync directly or relying on CData's compatibility with platforms like SSIS or Azure Data Factory. Others are looking to get analytics and reporting on live Jira data from preferred analytics tools like Tableau and Power BI.

Learn more about how customers are seamlessly connecting to their Jira data to solve business problems from our blog: Drivers in Focus: Collaboration Tools.


Getting Started


Configure Jira Connectivity for Power Query

Connectivity to Jira from Power Query is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with Jira data from Power Query, we start by creating and configuring a Jira connection.

  1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
    2. 👁 Adding a Connection
  2. Select "Jira" from the Add Connection panel
    3. 👁 Selecting a data source
  3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Jira.

    To connect to JIRA, provide the User and Password. Additionally, provide the Url; for example, https://yoursitename.atlassian.net.

    👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
  4. Click Save & Test
  5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Jira Connection page and update the User-based permissions. 👁 Updating permissions

Add a Personal Access Token

When connecting to Connect AI through the REST API, the OData API, or the Virtual SQL Server, a Personal Access Token (PAT) is used to authenticate the connection to Connect AI. It is best practice to create a separate PAT for each service to maintain granularity of access.

  1. Click on the Gear icon () at the top right of the Connect AI app to open the settings page.
  2. On the Settings page, go to the Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
  3. Give the PAT a name and click Create. 👁 Creating a new PAT
  4. The personal access token is only visible at creation, so be sure to copy it and store it securely for future use.

With the connection configured and a PAT generated, you are ready to connect to Jira data from Power Query.

Working with Live Jira Data in Power Query

With the connection to Connect AI configured, you are ready to work with live Jira data in Power Query.

  1. In Microsoft Excel, open the Power Query Editor (from the Data ribbon, click Get Data -> Launch Power Query Editor) 👁 Opening the Power Query Editor
  2. Click New Source -> SQL Server 👁 Creating a new SQL Server Source
  3. In the SQL Server database modal:
    • Set Server to tds.cdata.com,14333
    • (Optional) Set Database to the name of the Jira connection (e.g. JIRA1 )
    👁 Configuring the Server
  4. In the SQL Server credentials modal, select "Database" and
    • Set User to your Connect AI username (e.g. [email protected] )
    • Set Password to the PAT for the above user
    👁 Configuring the credentials
  5. Click Connect
  6. Select the table(s) you wish to work with in the Navigator and click "OK" 👁 Selecting the table(s) (Salesforce is shown)

At this point, you have live access to Jira data from Power Query for transformation and preparation.

👁 Working with data in Power Query (Salesforce is shown)

SQL Access to Jira Data

Now you have a direct connection to live Jira data from Microsoft Power Query. You can create more connections and transform and preparte your data to better drive business — all without replicating Jira data.

To get real-time data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications, sign up for a free trial of CData Connect AI.