Creating Cross-Project Templates for Consolidated Release Notes in Jira
Background
Different teams plan their projects differently. Many teams want release notes to be generated across multiple Jira projects to create a consolidated release notes document or report. In this case, people may have separate version for each project or single version name for those multiple projects. It is possible to address these scenarios by using cross-project templates and with the proper use of JQL queries and ARNR variables.
Fetching data dynamically when projects keep changing containing multiple versions nomenclatures per project
If you are trying retrieve issues from various Jira projects that might change every time while generating release notes/reports then using multiple version/project variables in cross-project template will help you with one time template setup.
Just ensure that the template you are creating is using multiple version variables in the way explained below -
For fetching issues from multiple projects - [projectId], [projectId1], [projectId2]….
For displaying multiple projects names - [projectName], [projectIName1], [projectName2]….
For fetching issues from multiple versions in given projects - [versionId1], [versionId2], [versionId3…….
For displaying multiple projects names - [versionName1], [versionName2], [versionName3]……
When previewing the template, you will get the opportunity to choose projects & corresponding versions to generate desired release notes.
Notice the table in below image where the ARNR variables have postfixes. You can easily incorporate multiple variables based on the release notes and reports you wish to generate from various projects.
In JQL as well you can use ARNR variables is same way, notice the JQL in below image -
Preview / Run the rule
When you preview template/ run a rule, notice the multiple projects and versions selections options you get.
The catch here is that you just have to save the template once and then give project and version inputs as needed and your sorted!
When you have fixed multiple projects & a common version name for all those projects
A lot teams create same version name for multiple projects and then they create a consolidated report of all the projects with that specific version name. In such case, you can hard code the JQL with project name and use only one variable that is [vesionName].
This way, when you preview/execute this template via rule, the output will be published with the list of issues from all the given projects and the version name. Please note, you only have to select any one relevant project that you have added in the JQL.
For better listing, you can group by projects. Read Customizing release notes content | How Group by function work?.
Need to generate release notes from different projects that have different version names? Follow below link -