Finishline

A script for generating reports from JIRA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK5n7HY4nfA

Contents

• Finishline
• Getting Started
  • Creating your config file
    • Config file format
    • Config scenarios
  • Creating your Makefile
  • Running Finishline
• Old Argument Format

Getting Started

Creating your config file

First copy example.conf to YOURPROJECT.conf. Supply the appropriate values for any REQUIRED options as well as any optional fields that you wish to use.

Config file format

The config file uses the INI format. All required options for Finishline are within an [options] section. In the example.conf file, commented lines indicate which options are required. Optional values are commented out. In the case of optional values, the defaults are configured in defaults.py.

Config scenarios

The config file supports specifying any arbitrary number of "scenarios". These are intended to be used when you regularly run Finishline with different values for the same config option. A common example is using different output templates depending on how you wish to report status. Scenarios provide a mechanism for storing all of these different values for a given config option in the same config file.

To create a scenario, simply add a new section to your config file. The name of the section will be the name of the scenario. Add any config options specific to the scenario to the new section. Values specified here override the values specified in the [options] section. To run Finishline using a scenario, pass the -s/--scenario argument to Finishline, specifying the name of the scenario you wish to use.

Creating your Makefile

It is recommended to use the make, to automate running Finishline. Make is a general purpose build automation tool that performs a series of steps defined in a Makefile. The make tool is readily available on all platforms, but steps for installing it are out of scope for this README.

A key function of Finishline is generating Google Slides presentations that contain status information about a JIRA project. Before you get started, you should create a slide deck to be used for this purpose. After creating the deck, make a note of the deck's identifier, which can be found in the Google Slides URL (it should be in the form https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/$SLIDES_ID). This ID will be referred to later as $(SLIDES_ID).

To start using Finishline for your JIRA project, first copy Makefile.sample to Makefile.$(YOURPROJECT) (note that $(YOURPROJECT) should be the name of your JIRA project). This sample Makefile has been preconfigured with a couple of targets that will allow you to create status slides as well as create an email status report.

There are a few small changes that you'll need to make in your new Makefile.$(YOURPROJECT):

• Replace all instances of $(YOUR_CONFIG_FILE) with the name of the config file you created earlier.
• Replace all instances of $(YOUR_SLIDES_TITLE) with a title that you wish to be used to name your status slide deck.
• Replace all instances of $(SLIDES_ID) with your slide deck ID

Running Finishline

To test Finishline on your project, run the following command from the root of the Finishline git repo:

make -f Makefile.$(YOURPROJECT) buildstatus

Upon running this command, Finishline will query JIRA for all issues that are in progress or recently completed. It will attempt to determine the parent epic for each of these issues, can calculate a progress percentage for that epic by calculating the percentage of story points or issues within that epic that are complete. Finishline assumes that your project uses the OKR process. As such, it expects issues to be grouped in an epic representing a KR, and that all KR epics are in turn sub tasks of another epic representing an Objective. When finishline runs, it will attempt to determine the parent Objective for all issues and group content as such. If no parent Objective can be found, KRs will be grouped under a general "Miscellaneous" heading.

When the above command is run, the status report content will be written to a file foo.md. Check this file to make sure its content is what you expect. If it is, run the following command to generate the status slide deck:

make -f Makefile.$(YOURPROJECT) uploadstatus

When the command is complete, your slide deck will automatically open in a browser window.

Another supported reporting format is plain text (e.g. for sending email status reports). In this mode, the report is saved to a text file, the contents of which can be copied into whatever location you wish. To generate this text report, run the following command:

make -f Makefile.$(YOURPROJECT) buildemail

This will save the report to a file titled report-$(DATE).md. (This file name is set in Makefile.$(YOURPROJECT) on the last line of the buildemail Make target.)

Finishline supports other arguments and features. We're working on adding documentation for all of this functionality. For now, feel free to reach out in a GitHub issue if you have any questions.

Old Argument Format

Finishline has been refactored to use config files instead of command line arguments. If you wish to use the old command line argument functionality, you may use the version of the code at the old-argument-format git tag. Note that new code changes will not be backported to this tag.