Dependency report from a Jira CSV

Jira has no report that lists what each epic waits on. This page builds one from a CSV export of your work items: every work item that is blocked by another, grouped by epic, with the blocker’s space, status and due date, and a flag where the blocker is due after the work waiting on it.

The file is read on this page, in your browser. It is not uploaded, and nothing in it is kept: close the page and it is gone.

Export the work items from Jira

1. In Jira’s work item search, search for the work that waits and the work it waits on, across every space in the meeting: project in (STOR, PAYC, MAPP) AND issueLinkType in ("blocks", "is blocked by"). Both directions bring the blockers into the file with the work they hold up.
2. Choose Export › Export CSV (all fields). Jira writes each Blocks link as a column, “Inward issue link (Blocks)” or “Outward issue link (Blocks)”, with the other work item’s key, and names each work item’s epic in “Parent key” and “Parent summary”, so the epics need not be in the search. Jira exports up to 10,000 work items at a time (Atlassian).
3. Drop the file below, or choose it.

How the report is built

• A blocker is a work item named in a “Blocks” link column of a work item in the file, from either side of the link.
• Grouped by epic, found from the Parent column, through a story’s subtasks. Work items with no epic in the file come last.
• Open blockers first, in each epic, and epics with an open blocker before the rest.
• Done is Jira’s Done status category, whatever the status is called.
• Another space is marked when the blocker’s space differs from the blocked work item’s.
• Due later is flagged when an open blocker’s due date is after the blocked work item’s due date, or its epic’s when it has none.
• Not in this export is the line for a blocker whose key the file does not hold: its status and date are unknown.

What a CSV export cannot tell it

• Anything outside the file. A blocker in a space the search did not cover shows as not in this export, with no status or date.
• Other link types. Only Blocks links are read.
• Dates other than due dates. A sprint’s end, a release or a Target end is not in the export, so a work item without a due date is not compared.
• What changed after the export. The report is the file’s.

Blockline reads the same links in Jira each time you open an epic, across spaces and through stories to their epics, with every date it finds.