Stave: Gantt Charts for Jira

Plan Jira work on a Gantt chart, drag to reschedule, and export the whole plan as a sharp, searchable PDF.

Stave draws a project, a saved filter or a JQL query as a Gantt chart, using the date fields your work items already have and the dependencies in Jira's "blocks" links. Change dates and dependencies by dragging, and export the whole chart as a vector PDF, PNG or CSV, on demand or on a schedule.

Getting started

Open Apps › Stave: Gantt Charts, or the Stave tab inside a project.
On the Apps page, choose Project, Saved filter or JQL, pick the source and select Show chart. Inside a project, the chart opens on that project.
Use Day, Week, Month or Quarter to zoom, and Today to jump to the red line that marks today.

A chart holds up to 50,000 work items. Work items are listed in rank order, with children under their parents.

Dates

Bars run from Start date to Due date by default. Under Start and End you can pick any other date fields, such as Target start and Target end. A work item with only one of the two dates draws as a one-day bar. A work item with neither is marked unscheduled, on screen and in exports; tick Hide unscheduled to leave those out (parents of scheduled work stay).

Changing the plan

Move a bar by dragging it, or resize it by dragging either end. Stave changes only the dates the work item already has: moving an item that has only a due date changes only its due date.
Schedule an unscheduled item by dragging across its row.
Add a dependency: hover over a bar, then drag from the dot at its end to another bar. The first item then blocks the second.
Remove a dependency: click its arrow, then Remove dependency. Arrows are red when work starts before its blocker ends.
Select a work item's key to open it in Jira.

Every change is saved to Jira as you, with your permissions. If Jira refuses a change, the bar or arrow goes back and Stave shows Jira's reason.

Grouping and saved views

Group by Parent / child, Assignee, Fix version (the first one, if a work item has several) or nothing. Save view keeps the source, date fields, grouping, zoom and export layout under a name. Saved views are shared with everyone on the site, and each person sees only the work items they have permission to see. Only the person who saved a view, or a Jira administrator, can change or delete it.

Export

PDF: the whole chart, drawn as vectors, so text stays sharp and can be searched and copied. Fit scales the dates to the page width and runs the rows down as many pages as needed. Poster keeps the current zoom and tiles the chart across and down; every page repeats the title, the date header and the key and summary column. Page sizes: A3, A4, Letter and Tabloid, landscape. Large exports run in the background; about 6,000 work items take under a minute.
PNG: an image of the part of the chart on screen.
CSV: one row per work item with its dates, status, assignee, parent, fix versions and blockers. Opens in Excel.

Finished PDF exports stay in Your recent exports for 7 days. Only the person who made an export can download it.

Scheduled exports

Under Schedules, save the current chart as a daily or weekly PDF or CSV export. Each run attaches the file to a work item you choose and adds a comment there, so Jira sends its usual notification email to the people watching that work item: add the people who should get the export as watchers. You need permission to add attachments and comments on that work item. Each run includes only work items the schedule's owner can see; if the owner loses access to the delivery work item, the schedule pauses. Run now runs a schedule immediately.

Settings

Jira administrators can set the accent color used by Stave's buttons under Jira settings › Apps › Stave: Gantt Charts.

Limits

Up to 50,000 work items per chart and per export.
Dependencies come from the "blocks" link type; other link types are not drawn.
A scheduled export of more than 200 work items checks the owner's permission per project; issue-level security within a project the owner can browse is not re-checked.
The PNG covers the visible part of the chart; use PDF for the whole plan.

Permissions and data

Stave reads work items, fields and link types, and changes only what you change: date fields, "blocks" links, and for scheduled exports an attachment and a comment on the work item you choose. It stores saved views (name, source, date fields, grouping, zoom, export layout, and the account ID and display name of the person who saved it), schedules, export records and the finished export files for 7 days, and site settings, all in Atlassian Forge hosted storage. The app declares zero external network egress; no data leaves Atlassian's infrastructure.

Support

Questions or problems: support@helzbrand.com