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URL: https://www.cdata.com/kb/tech/jira-cloud-powerbi-service-gateway.rst

⇱ Visualize Live Jira Data in the Power BI Service

Visualize Live Jira Data in the Power BI Service

👁 Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Use CData Connect AI to connect to live Jira data and create custom reports in the Power BI Service through the On-Premises Gateway.

Power BI transforms your company's data into rich visuals for you to collect and organize so you can focus on what matters to you. When paired with CData Connect AI, you get instant access to Jira data for visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article shows how to build and publish a dataset from Jira data in Power BI and then create reports on Jira data in the Power BI service.

CData Connect AI provides a pure SQL interface for Jira, allowing you to easily build reports from live Jira data in Power BI — with no need to replicate the data. As you build visualizations, Power BI generates SQL queries to gather data. Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect AI pushes 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


NOTE: You can also import Jira data into Power BI through Connect AI (instead of using the on-premise gateway). Read how in the related Knowledge Base article.

Configure Jira Connectivity for Power BI

Connectivity to Jira from Power BI is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with Jira data from Power BI, 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 BI.

Connecting to Connect AI from Power BI

To connect to and visualize live Jira data in the Power BI service, install the on-premise data gateway, add a data source to the gateway from the Power BI service, and publish a dataset from Power BI Desktop to the service.

Install the On-Premises Data Gateway

The Microsoft on-premise data gateway provides secure data transfer between connected data sources and various cloud-based Microsoft tools and platforms. You can read more about the gateway in the Microsoft documentation.

You can download and install the gateway from the Power BI service:

  1. Log in to PowerBI.com.
  2. Click the Download menu and click Data Gateway. 👁 Download the Data Gateway
  3. Follow the instructions for installation, making note of the name of the gateway.

Add Jira as a Data Source to the Power BI Service

Once you have installed the data gateway, you add Connect AI as a data source to the Power BI service:

  1. Log in to PowerBI.com.
  2. Click the Settings menu and click "Manage gateways." 👁 Settings -> Manage gateways
  3. Click "ADD DATA SOURCE" and configure the connection to Connect AI:

    • Set Data Source Name to something like ConnectCloudJIRA.
    • Choose SQL Server as the Data Source Type.
    • Set Server to tds.cdata.com,14333.
    • Set Database to the name of your Jira connection (e.g. JIRA1).
    • Set Authentication Method to Basic.
    • Set Username to a Connect AI user (e.g. [email protected])
    • Set Password to the PAT for the user above.

Publish a Dataset from Power BI Desktop

With the gateway installed and Connect AI added as a datasource to the Power BI service, you can publish a dataset from Power BI Desktop to the service.

  1. Open Power BI, click Get Data -> More, then select SQL Server database, and click Connect.
    2. 👁 Create a new connection in Power BI
  2. Set the connection properties and click OK.
    • Set Server to tds.cdata.com,14333.
    • Set Database to the name of your Jira connection (e.g. JIRA1).
    • Set Data Connectivity mode to DirectQuery*.
    👁 Connect to CData Connect AI instance
    * DirectQuery enables live query processing and real-time visualizations of Jira data.
  3. In the authentication wizard, select Database, set the User name and Password properties, and click Connect.
    4. 👁 Authenticate the connection
  4. Select the table(s) to visualize in the Navigator dialog.
  5. In the Query Editor, you can customize your dataset by filtering, sorting, and summarizing Jira columns. Click Edit to open the query editor. Right-click a raw to filter the rows. Right-click a column header to perform options like the following:
    • Change column data types
    • Remove a column
    • Group by columns

    Power BI detects each column's data type from the Jira metadata reported by Connect AI.

    Power BI records your modifications to the query in the Applied Steps section, adjusting the underlying data retrieval query that is executed to the remote Jira data. When you click Close and Apply, Power BI executes the data Retrieval query.

    Otherwise, click Load to pull the data into Power BI.

  6. Define any relationships between the selected entities on the Relationships tab.
  7. Click Publish (from the Home menu) and select a Workspace.

Build Reports and Dashboards on Jira Data in the Power BI Service

Now that you have published a dataset to the Power BI service, you can create new reports and dashboards based on the published data:

  1. Log in to PowerBI.com.
  2. Click Workspaces and select a workspace.
  3. Click Create and select Report.
  4. Select the published dataset for the report. 👁 Select a dataset
  5. Choose fields and visualizations to add to your report. 👁 Visualizing Jira data in the Power BI service

Live Access to Jira Data from Cloud Applications

Now you have a direct connection to live Jira data from the Power BI service. You can create more data sources and new visualizations, build reports, and more — all without replicating Jira data.

To get live 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.