Jira BigQuery Integration: How to Connect Jira to BigQuery Easily

Today’s eventful and innovative business world constantly requires an entrepreneur to be more creative at implementing commercial solutions that really work and faster at making game-changing decisions. Therefore, precise data analysis is a common method at many companies. To handle large amounts of structured and sometimes unstructured data from different sources, owners and managers look for efficient tools helping them to stay up-to-date on their operations.

In this regard, both BigQuery as an enterprise data warehouse and Jira as amazing project management software for agile teams are greatly beneficial.

BigQuery is part of the Google Cloud environment, which contains many balancing tools that support creating a centralized warehouse from numerous data sources. It solves the issue of storing massive datasets by supporting superfast SQL queries. It is an adjustable and fully managed analytics solution that lets you effectively and securely investigate big data.

As well, Jira is a customizable project management system that allows teams to build a centralized database and create, assign, and track tasks. Jira has abilities that are ideal for organizing tasks and managing teams. It is highly configurable and flexible to allow for usage in a wide variety of environments and procedures. The amount of commercial data Jira contains may be crucial to understanding and developing new strategic opportunities and improving company performance.

Now imagine these two powerful services combined! At that point, BigQuery and Jira integration allow you to add Jira to your main data sources in BigQuery and get the latest and fullest project data for consistent business decisions. Using Jira Cloud as an information source for BigQuery, team members can not only track their own project activity but also evaluate results to determine overall business outcomes.

To get Jira and BigQuery integrated, you need an application. This is the simplest method that does not require special technical skills and is achievable for any user.

Introducing our app BigQuery Connector for Jira!

Currently, this is the only Jira+BigQuery type enterprise-level solution on the Atlassian marketplace. The app has recently got the status of an Atlassian Cloud Fortified app. This rank confirms maintaining high criteria of operation and having abilities to protect data.

BigQuery Connector for Jira enables you to transfer all your data from Jira to Google BigQuery and unlock insights with real-time and predictive analytics. Generate multiple data sources bringing your Jira reports to life and keep all information together to create actionable insights.

BigQuery Connector for Jira will be useful for analysts and business intelligence professionals and entrepreneurs who work with Google BigQuery. It will be especially helpful for managers not having Jira admin skills, as it does not require any additional competence to start using it. This functionality allows you to create URL connections easily, without any specific knowledge from the user side.

The app’s main features include:

• all Jira data export, including custom fields, History, Agile
• various filtering options, including Basic filters, JQL and advanced filters for Jira Software fields
• permission and sharing settings for multi-user and groups environment for secured Jira data sharing
• data export from the 3rd-party applications (Tempo, Time In Status, Projectrak, etc.) to have a wider overview.

To start discovering the BigQuery Connector for Jira app’s functionality, first, you need to download it on the Atlassian Marketplace. Learn about 2 ways to do this, below.

1. Type “BigQuery Connector for Jira” into a search line on the marketplace. You’ll see this page offering our application among the results.

2. Or discover the app right from its official page on the marketplace. Don’t forget to choose your pricing plan, choose the required hosting option (Jira Cloud, Data Center or Server), enter the number of employees and indicate a proper product billing cycle to get the most out of BigQuery Connector for Jira.

Also, there’s a 30-day free trial license for those who are not sure about the pricing plan but are ready to start using the app now.

The Cloud version of BigQuery Connector for Jira is free for small teams up to 10 users.

The following few steps will explain to you how to install BigQuery Connector for Jira. Let’s see!


Step 1. Go to the Jira Cloud Apps → Find new apps section.

Step 2. Enter “BigQuery Connector for Jira Alpha Serve” in the search field, press Enter, and find the application in the search result.

Click on it.

Step 3. Click Try it free to get a 30-day free trial license.

Step 4. In the opened window, click the button Start free trial. You'll be informed about the plugin installation process started.

You’ll be notified about successful installation.

You can easily access BigQuery Connector for Jira from the main navigation menu: Apps → BigQuery Connector for Jira.

Obviously, not all users should have permission to export Jira data to Google BigQuery. Jira Cloud Administrators can grant the permissions to work with BigQuery Connector for Jira for certain users or groups of users. Instructions below show how to grant the permissions to work with the connector (ability to create, edit, watch, and export connectors).

In Jira primary navigation menu, click Apps and find BigQuery Connector for Jira in your app list.

Select Administration from the left-side navigation menu.

At the BigQuery Connector for Jira Settings page, click the Edit icon.

In the Edit permissions window, click the Select groups field and select groups from the available groups in the list. You can select as many groups as you need.

To Select users click the Select users field and start to type the username you want to grant permissions to work with the connector. Select user from the list. You can select as many individual users as you need.

To save the permissions, click the Save button.

Click Apps Tab on the Jira’s main menu. Then find from the list and choose BigQuery Connector.

Below you can find a description of the fields, buttons, and settings of the data source creating page:

• Name - Enter data source name
• Dataset Name - Enter a dataset name
• Service account key - see how to get it here: How to create a service account key in BigQuery?
• Description - Enter the data source description
• Share settings - You may share this data source with users or groups of users who have permission to use the application. To share the data source click the Share settings button.
• Select groups - select and add relevant users group
• Select users - select and add relevant users
• Save - click to apply changes.

Filter issues section

All - choose if you want to export all existing issues.
Select by JQL - choose if you want to use JQL to create your own request and filter data.
Basic - choose if you want to use standard fields filters.


To set up a Basic filter click the Issue filter button.
Select from the list of available:

• Projects
• Issue Types
• Statuses
• Created From/To
• Updated From/To

Click Apply to apply the filter.

“Apply” section

• Save- click to create a data source.
• Preview - Click to check the source name/description/issue filters/export items.
• Close - leave data source creating page. Changes you’ve made will not be saved.

For more detailed information check app documentation.

Finally, the main question is: how to set up data transfer from Jira to your main data warehouse BigQuery? The next few paragraphs will teach you to do this.

Step 1. Click Export Data. Data exporting will be completed when it will be in NOT EXPORTED status.

Step 2. Go to your Google Cloud Platform account and navigate to the relevant project. (The project in which you created service account key).

Step 3. Navigate to the Resources tab.

Step 4. Using the left side console menu:

• Open all project datasets.
• Choose a particular dataset you need.
• Choose a particular schema you need.
• Edit schemas.

If you don't see your data at the console menu try to refresh the page.

Success!

Project management platforms such as Jira bring lots of benefits for all kinds of teams, but you always require additional tools like BigQuery to make good use of the raw data it helps to gather. BigQuery Connector for Jira is the exact thing to combine the best you take from Jira experience and how you use BigQuery for big data analysis. From that perspective, an easy and practical framework to link Jira and BigQuery becomes a considerable business perk, helping owners and managers shape better commercial strategies and make decisions based on well-judged hypotheses.