True Time in Status — User Guide
Matches the in-app Help panel · updated 2026-07-14
What it does
True Time in Status reads each issue's changelog (the History tab) and reports how long the issue spent in every workflow status — counted against a business calendar (timezone + working hours + holidays), with daylight saving handled correctly. Every number is auditable: click a cell to see the per-day breakdown it is built from, which sums to the cell by construction.
Getting a report (0–2 clicks)
- Open Apps → True Time in Status. A report over issues created in the last 90 days runs automatically.
- To scope it: pick a Project from the dropdown (rewrites the JQL for you), or edit the JQL directly and hit Run.
That's it. Export CSV downloads the table; the Calendar picker switches what "time" means (see below).
Reading the table
| Cell | Meaning |
|---|---|
12.5h | Business time the issue spent in that status. Click for the per-day breakdown. |
12.5h ×2 | Entered the status more than once; the number is the sum of all visits. |
0.0h | Entered the status, but accrued zero business time (e.g. only nights/weekends/holidays). Clickable — the breakdown shows the non-working days. |
– | Never entered that status. |
Columns are ordered by total accumulated time (highest first). Footer rows: Σ Sum per column and x̄ Avg over the issues that actually visited the column.
The four things people ask about
1. Timezones & daylight saving
Business hours are evaluated in the calendar's timezone —
not yours, not the server's. A 9–17 calendar in
America/New_York counts 9–17 New York wall-clock time;
on DST-switch days the day genuinely has 23 or 25 hours and the math follows
the wall clock.
If a number looks "an hour off": the built-in Business hours calendar is stamped with your browser's timezone, which may differ from your team's. For shared reports, create a custom calendar pinned to the team's zone (Manage calendars → New calendar).
2. Calendars — why numbers change when you switch
- 24/7 counts every hour → durations equal elapsed wall-clock time.
- Business hours counts only working windows →
weekend/overnight time disappears. An issue that sat in review over a
weekend can legitimately show
0.0h.
Both are correct; they answer different questions ("how long did it sit?" vs "how much working time did it consume?"). The active calendar is always shown in the report's meta bar and footnote.
3. Board columns are not statuses
The report measures the status field from the issue's workflow. Board columns are a view: one column can hold several statuses, and different boards map the same statuses differently. When the report disagrees with what a board seems to show, compare against the issue's History tab — that is the ground truth this app reads.
4. Permissions — what the report can see
The report runs as the viewing user, so it can only include issues that user could already open in Jira. Two people running identical JQL can get different issue counts if their permissions differ. That is Jira permission behavior, not report drift. Nothing is elevated, cached across users, or shared.
Limits (v1)
- Reports cap at 1,000 issues; a warning chip appears when the JQL matched more. Narrow the query (project, date bound, status category).
- Large reports compute in chunks with a live progress bar — a full 1,000-issue report completes; it just takes a little while.
- Dashboard gadgets compute in a single pass and may show a partial badge on very large scopes — narrow the gadget's JQL, or use the full app for big reports.
- Jira rejects unbounded JQL — every query needs a
restriction such as
created >= -90d. The app's defaults always include one.
CSV export
Hours at 3-decimal precision. Blank cell = never entered the status;
0.000 = entered but accrued no business time. Comma-safe
(RFC 4180), UTF-8 with BOM so Excel renders Σ/x̄ correctly.
Data & privacy
- Reads issues/changelogs only as the viewing user; no data leaves Atlassian's infrastructure (built entirely on Atlassian Forge).
- The app stores only: custom calendars, the selected calendar, and a per-user counter for the one-time review prompt — all in Forge app storage. Details: Privacy Policy.
Still stuck? Contact support.