Forum Discussion

4fml's avatar
4fml
Occasional Contributor
2 years ago

JIRAUSER12345 instead of user name in Excel report

I found a similar question here https://community.smartbear.com/t5/Zephyr-Scale-Questions/Unable-to-add-owner-field-when-imported-test-case-via-csv-file/m-p/240078/highlight/true#M1904 but want it to be answered more generic.

 

When we use Zephyr Scale's reports in Jira, e.g. "Test execution results (list)", it shows the user names as clear text in the browser window for all users. When the same report gets exported to Excel, for some users it shows JIRAUSER12345 instead of the user alias in fields “Execution.Assigned To” and “Execution.Executed By”. According to https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-questions/User-showing-as-an-ID-value-instead-of-users-name/qaq-p/1684514, it seems to be a GDPR -compliance measure. I am not convinced by this argumentation because it is an incomplete approach that does not solve anything, it only generates additional work for the user: either to restore the obfuscated IDs back to the real user names, or to anonymize all other user names manually. In both cases the current implementation is a failure.

 

How can I get the Excel report to write out the user names as can be seen in the web report?

  • MisterB's avatar
    MisterB
    Champion Level 3
    2 years ago

    It seems to be a Jira admin function and Scale is inheriting the obfuscated values (see link below).

     

    But as to how you would reveal the names, I don't know that you can if Jira is the source of the issue, other than creating a mapping table in Excel and using a VLOOKUP to translate the userIDs, assuming the userID doesn't change each time the report is generated!

     

    Anonymizing users | Administering Jira applications Data Center and Server 9.7 | Atlassian Documentation

  • 4fml's avatar
    4fml
    Occasional Contributor
    2 years ago

    The question basically is: if it can display the clear name of a user on the webpage, why can it not write it to a file? Obviously the module has the information about the clear name. The export functionality is a functionality of Zephyr Scale, so it should be in SmartBear's hands. At least a pragmatic way around it would be to have two export options: 1) clear names and 2) obfuscated.

  • MisterB's avatar
    MisterB
    Champion Level 3
    2 years ago

    It's a fair question.  I don't know how it works, but at an educated guess I think it's a Jira feature that Scale has to work within the limits of, and Jira is what is controlling what is made available to Scale for export.  As an example, if the Jira administrator elects to obfuscate usernames, Jira will only ever permit an export to present obfuscated username data.  Scale is therefore only ever presented with the obfuscated username.  This really makes sense if the purpose of the feature is to minimise risk of GDPR data breaches.