Connect to Jira Data from Crystal Reports



Use CData Connect Cloud to connect to and report on live Jira data from Crystal Reports.

Crystal Reports is a business intelligence application by SAP designed to help you analyze your data with well-formatted, pixel-perfect, and multi-page reports. When paired with CData Connect Cloud, Crystal Reports gets access to live Jira data. This article demonstrates how to connect to Jira using Connect Cloud and report on Jira data in Crystal Reports.

CData Connect Cloud provides a pure SQL Server interface for Jira, allowing you to query data from Jira without replicating the data to a natively supported database. Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect Cloud pushes all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc.) directly to Jira, leveraging server-side processing to return the requested Jira data quickly.

About Jira Data Integration

CData simplifies access and integration of live Jira data. Our customers leverage CData connectivity to:

  • Gain bi-directional access to their Jira objects like issues, projects, and workflows.
  • Use SQL stored procedures to perform functional actions like changing issues status, creating custom fields, download or uploading an attachment, modifying or retrieving time tracking settings, and more.
  • Authenticate securely using a variety of methods, including username and password, OAuth, personal access token, API token, Crowd or OKTA SSO, LDAP, and more.

Most users leverage CData solutions to integrate Jira data with their database or data warehouse, whether that's using CData Sync directly or relying on CData's compatibility with platforms like SSIS or Azure Data Factory. Others are looking to get analytics and reporting on live Jira data from preferred analytics tools like Tableau and Power BI.

Learn more about how customers are seamlessly connecting to their Jira data to solve business problems from our blog: Drivers in Focus: Collaboration Tools.


Getting Started


Configure Jira Connectivity for Crystal Reports

Connectivity to Jira from Crystal Reports is made possible through CData Connect Cloud. To work with Jira data from Crystal Reports, we start by creating and configuring a Jira connection.

  1. Log into Connect Cloud, click Connections and click Add Connection
  2. Select "Jira" from the Add Connection panel
  3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Jira.

    To connect to JIRA, provide the User and Password. Additionally, provide the Url; for example, https://yoursitename.atlassian.net.

  4. Click Create & Test
  5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Jira Connection page and update the User-based permissions.

Add a Personal Access Token

If you are connecting from a service, application, platform, or framework that does not support OAuth authentication, you can create a Personal Access Token (PAT) to use for authentication. Best practices would dictate that you create a separate PAT for each service, to maintain granularity of access.

  1. Click on your username at the top right of the Connect Cloud app and click User Profile.
  2. On the User Profile page, scroll down to the Personal Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
  3. Give your PAT a name and click Create.
  4. The personal access token is only visible at creation, so be sure to copy it and store it securely for future use.

Connect to Jira from Crystal Reports using Connect Cloud

To establish a connection from Crystal Reports to CData Connect Cloud, you will need to download the JDBC driver.

  1. Open the Client Tools page of CData Connect Cloud.
  2. In the Dev Tools section, click JDBC.
  3. Download and run the setup file.
  4. When the installation is complete, locate the JDBC Connect JAR file in the JDBC driver's installation directory, for example, C:\Program Files\CData\JDBC Driver for CData Connect\lib.
  5. Copy the JDBC Connect JAR file (cdata.jdbc.connect.jar).

After copying the JDBC CData Connect JAR file, you will need to paste it into the Crystal Reports installation location and configure the connection to Connect Cloud.

  1. Find the installation directory for Crystal Reports, for example, C:\Program Files (x86)\SAP BusinessObjects\SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 4.0\java\lib
  2. Paste the JDBC Connect JAR file into the Crystal Reports installation directory.
  3. Go to the parent java folder. For example, C:\Program Files (x86)\SAP BusinessObjects\SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 4.0\java This folder should contain a CRConfig file.
  4. Open CRConfig in a text editor.
  5. Add the path to the JDBC CData Connect JAR file in the of the CRConfig file, for example, C:\Program Files (x86)\SAP BusinessObjects\SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 4.0\java\lib
  6. Log into Crystal Reports and start a blank report.
  7. In the Database Expert dialog, click Create New Connection.
  8. Select the JDBC data source and the tables you want to add. Click OK.
  9. In the Connection dialog, enter the Connection URL (e.g. jdbc:connect:AuthScheme=OAuth;) and Database Classname (e.g. cdata.jdbc.connect.ConnectDriver).
  10. Click Finish. The Database Expert dialog displays all available connections.

You can now create reports with the connected data.

Get CData Connect Cloud

To get live data access to 100+ SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from Crystal Reports, try CData Connect Cloud today!

Ready to get started?

Learn more about CData Connect Cloud or sign up for free trial access:

Free Trial