Historical Report on State Transitions

This report helps us to determine how many times a work item(s) have been moved into particular workflow state(s).

The report supports filtering and breakdowns per entity type, state name, and date range. The period can be selected as daily, weekly, monthly, and even longer.

Here are examples of use cases and purposes of this type of report:

• Track status changes from one state to other state monthly. For example, we have an internal state called "Move to Production". I would like to know how many User Stories are moved to this state monthly.
• Create a report showing the development throughput each week. Our workflow contains the "Development" state, and we want a total effort of stories that were moved to the next state during a particular week.
• Count the number of times one (or many) stories or bugs have been in particular states. For example, imagine this story has been through testing 3 times already and we need to pay particular attention to it. Or this team has an issue in that their stories on average require testing 3 times before they are being closed.
• Show how many times each defect has been at each status during its completion flow - for multiple defects. The rationale behind this is to track how successful we are at fixing defects and in the above example, I could show that ID #11223 has been returned to development twice since a fix was unsuccessful
• Set up a chart that shows me all of my entities (user stories, bugs etc) that have ever been in a "Rejected" status

Creating Reports

Number of times entities have been in particular states

Let us describe step by step how to create the report showing count of times each Bug has been moved to the 'In Testing' workflow state.

• Click +Create > Report to start building new Visual report.

• On the Setup tab please select:

  • Chart (it's also possible to use Table report for different representation)
  • Source type: History Changes & Transitions
  • Projects and teams: the ones you're interested in
  • Entities: Bugs
  • Changes: Entity State is changed

• Make selection of Date Range.

  Either Release, Sprint, Team Iteration or date range should be specified. Blank values in all of these selectors together are not allowed.

• Apply Filter. Copy the following rule to the Filter box. Put the name of the state you’re interested in to quotes.

  ?EntityState is 'In Testing'

• Press Create report button.

• Put the following fields to axes:

  • Horizontal axis: Count of Records
  • Vertical axis: Entity Name
  • Chart type: Bar chart

• Make items sorted by count of state transitions.

  Specify vertical axis options:

  Sort: Descending

  By: COUNT([Modification Id])

• Press Finish setup button.

Here is how resulting report looks like:

Number of entities that entered particular state per week

Let us describe step by step how to create the report showing count bugs that have been moved to the 'Coded' workflow state weekly.

• Click +Create > Report to start building new Visual report.

• On the Setup tab please select:

  • Chart (it's also possible to use Table report for different representation)
  • Source type: History Changes & Transitions
  • Projects and teams: the ones you're interested in
  • Entities: Bugs
  • Changes: Entity State is changed

• Make selection of Date Range.

  Either Release, Sprint, Team Iteration or date range should be specified. Blank values in all of these selectors together are not allowed.

• Apply Filter. Copy the following rule to the Filter box. Put the name of the state you’re interested in to quotes.

  ?EntityState is 'Coded'

• Press Create report button.

• Put the following fields to axes:

  • Horizontal axis: WEEK(Date of Modification)
  • Vertical axis: Count of Records
  • Chart type: Bar chart

• It is possible to merge distinct records. At the moment the report shows number of times the bugs have been moved to 'Coded' state. However if some bugs were moved to the state multiple times, each time is counted. To count unique bugs only we should add grouping by distinct records to the configuration of the chart.

  Click on the vertical axis settings.

  And instead of

  COUNT([Modification Id])

  please type

  COUNT_DISTINCT([Entity Id])

• Press Finish setup button.

Here is how resulting report looks like:

Further customization

It is possible to display every Bug as separate colored bar in the chart. Put Entity Id field to the Color selector, and switch Chart Type to Stacked Bar.

Here is how the resulting chart looks like:

Report showing how many entities moved from and to what state

The report is for assignable entities.

Filters by previous values

?PreviousHistoryRecord.EntityState is not None

?PreviousHistoryRecord.EntityState is not 'Complete'

See Also

• How to Create a Historical Report