About Xpand IT
With several customers across the world, we provide the top IT knowledge for our customers, so they can focus on their core business and still have the best IT resources for their company needs, seamlessly integrated into their business processes. We identify ourselves as a Team with Passion for Excellence, and we differentiate our services by having the best people with the best expertise in the following areas: Business Intelligence, Business Process & Integration, Enterprise Mobility, IT Systems, and Enterprise Applications.
Problem
Xpand IT developed an Add-On for JIRA, called Xporter for JIRA. This Add-On offered to users the possibility of exporting their JIRA issues content to several formats, using Microsoft Word Templates. Among several features, specified below are some relevant for this situation:
- Define templates in DOCX, RTF or ODT files, upload and configure through JIRA Administration
- Single and multiple issue export to PDF, DOCX, RFT, ODT, PNG and SVG
- Exporting image attachments
- Exporting comments, subtask fields, and linked issues and many others.
The problem emerged when several clients asked about the possibility of exporting those issues into an Excel format. This feature wasn’t available in Xporter neither in JIRA itself.
Solution
Xpand IT chose Aspose.Cells for .NET, because we were already satisfied clients, and have already used other Aspose products, more precisely to be the Aspose.Words for .NET.
Our development team investigated all available libraries that provide manipulation and creation of Excel files. After that investigation, we concluded that Aspose.Cells for .NET was the best mature library relative to others. It had good support and nice product evolution. We wanted to build documents dynamically, where the input was variant, and Aspose.Cells for .NET provided a way to do that, easily.
Xporter for JIRA templates was managed in JIRA Administration and allowed us to manage templates (upload/remove templates) and set templates permissions (which templates to be displayed for a project, issue type, user, etc…)
Exporting issues for JIRA
Excel template
Actually, the Xporter Plugin for JIRA offered the ability to export data along with a customization component, all in an extremely simple and effective way. Project managers were able to export JIRA issues and thus create their custom reports in seconds.
Result of Exporting issue data into Excel format
Experience
Finding a solution:
We have been using Aspose.Words for Java since 2009 in our Product and the feedback couldn’t be better. Because of that, we thought about Aspose.Cells for .NET. We started using a trial version and our implementation was completed very quickly. We believe that it will be a great and powerful future for our product. We started using a trial license and we didn’t need any support during the implementation cycle.
Implementation:
The implementation took around 7/8 weeks, but most of the time was more due to the complexity of the engine than with the use of the Aspose.Cells for .NET library.
Our business logic has been based on templates. We had a document engine that received some data and an Excel file known as the template file. This template file had mappings that were processed by our document engine. As a result, a “compiled” file, i.e., the template file with mappings replaced by real data was generated. Until today, everything went smoothly and there was no need to ask for support.
Outcome:
As described above, we had a document engine that processed template files. This introduced a high complexity but it was not related to the usage of Aspose Cells for .NET. Regarding the usage, it has proved to be simple to use and provided a simple way to read, create and manipulate data into the entire workbook. All the objectives were fully met and we do believe that with the help of Aspose.Cells for .NET, we created a great feature for our product, making it even more competitive.
Next Steps
As our product is constantly following our client’s needs, we are always upgrading it and thinking about new features. For sure, if in the future we find that any other Aspose products could be the answer to some of our requirements, we have no doubts that they are going to be our first priority.
Summary
Our overall experience with Aspose products was very positive. Particularly, Aspose.Cells for .NET component increased business value to Xpand IT product – Xporter Plugin for JIRA, allowed us to develop a reference solution for data export. The Aspose.Cells for .NET component has proved to be an extremely complete and was very important in implementing this new feature in the plugin.
Xporter for JIRA now is able to export issues from JIRA in Excel format, which is a huge step for the product.
Xpand IT is very satisfied with the Aspose.Cells for .NET performance and until now, we are fully confident that we made the right decision in choosing it. We sincerely recommend Aspose products as their components have a key role in Xporter for JIRA, and in its success.
Paulo Lopes
Chief Commercial Officer
Xpand IT
