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There are a number of ways to generate a Jira work log report.

Developers and staff members can set an original estimate to issues, log time against issues and adjust the time remaining. This is a great way to give product owners and management the ability to see how far long issues are.

If all you want to see is how far along an individual issue is, all you have to do is click into it and check the time spent and time remaining.

This works well if you mainly use Stories, Tasks and Sub-tasks as your primary issue types.

Jira has a handy feature which lets you roll up time estimates to parent Stories or Tasks from Sub-tasks. If your team is using Sub-tasks, management never has to open a Sub-task to see how far a higher level Story is going.

All they have to do is go into the parent Story and click “Include Sub-task” to get a nice work log report for the entire Story.

While this is a handy feature, most teams require more than this.

What if you want to track the progress of multiple issues as a group? What if you’re using higher level issue types like Epics or Features?

How can you generate a work log report which lets management see the bigger picture?

There are a few options for product owners and managers to do this.

Use The Dashboard Feature to View A Jira Work Log Report Of Multiple Issues

Jira has a built-in dashboard which can be helpful for tracking the progress of many issues as a unit. You get a pie chart which sums your time estimates and divides them up by ‘Epic Link’ or ‘Assignee’.

To create a dashboard which tracks the total time spent by “Epic Link”, go to:

1. Dasboards
2. Create Dashboard
3. Give your dashboard a name and click Save
4. Click add new gadget
5. Select Workload Pie Chart

6. Enter your desired settings:

• The project or filter you want to track
• How you want to divide the pie (“Epic Link” or “Assignee”)
• What time estimate you want tracked (“Time Spent”, “Original Estimate”, “Time Remaining or “Current Estimate”)

9. Click Save

You can use it work out the total time spent, total time remaining or total original estimate of a set of issues.

While it doesn’t let you go more granular, for a general overview, it can be a useful dashboard.

Use Agile Docs to View Consolidated Jira Work Log Reports

If you want a work log report of your entire project, but also want the flexibility to get a more granular view of your Epics, Stories and Sub-tasks, we made Agile Docs.

Agile Docs lets you select any project, release of filter just like the pie chart. But rather than dividing the pie up by ‘Epic Link’ or “Assignee”, Agile Docs reports the work log progress of your entire issue hierarchy down to the Sub-task level.

You have the flexibility to set any issue type as your top level issue type.

Like the pie chart, you can view the work log progress of entire sets of issues. But Agile Docs lets you view this at any level of granularity.

This has the bonus of giving you a nice Jira tree view of your issues.

It’s one thing to know your project is 50% towards being completed. It’s another thing to know which Epics, Stories, or Sub-tasks are holding up the show.

Agile Docs maintains fields for Total Time Spent, Total Remaining Estimate, and Time Progress % on each issue so you can quickly generate a work log report for any project, release of filter at any level of granularity.

Generate a Time Tracking Report at the Epic Or Feature Level

For example, say you want to see how your entire project is going, but you’re particularly interested in which higher level Epic is holding up the show.

Agile Docs lets you condense the view down to your higher level issue types. Select “Epic” as your top level issue type and uncheck “Expand All Levels”.

This will let you see your Jira Epic progress at a glance.

You can then sort Epics by any field including time progress % and track which Feature or Epic is lagging in any segment.

From here you can dig into the lagging Feature or Epic and see which Story, Task or Sub-task has fallen behind. This lets you quickly go from the macro to the micro to zoom in on the lagging Task which needs your attention.

If you want to skip the higher level Epics and track a particular sprint or team you can also do this in Agile Docs.

Create a filter which points to a sprint or team and bring it up in Agile Docs. It’ll generate a nice work log report for that team and show you the progress of individual issues.

Comprehensive Work Log Reports Are The Key To Better Decision Making

Whichever option best meets your needs, having insightful time tracking reports are essential for management to make the best decisions possible. It’s difficult to know where to allocate your time for maximum impact when you aren’t sure which part of your project has fallen behind. Jira’s built in dashboard gadget and Agile Docs help solve this.