Issue Metrics Action

This is a GitHub Action that searches for issues/pull requests/discussions in a repository, measures several metrics, and generates a report in form of a GitHub issue. The issues/pull requests/discussions to search for can be filtered by using a search query.

This action, developed by GitHub OSPO for our internal use, is open-sourced for your potential benefit. Feel free to inquire about its usage by creating an issue in this repository.

Available Metrics

Metric	Description
Time to First Response	The duration from creation to the initial comment or review.*
Time to Close	The period from creation to closure.*
Time to Answer (Discussions Only)	The time from creation to an answer.
Time in Label	The duration from label application to removal, requires LABELS_TO_MEASURE env variable.

*For pull requests, these metrics exclude the time the PR was in draft mode.

*For issues and pull requests, comments by issue/pull request author's and comments by bots are excluded.

To find syntax for search queries, check out the documentation on searching issues and pull requests or searching discussions.

Sample Report

The output of this action is a report in form of a GitHub issue. Below you see a sample of such a GitHub issue.

Getting Started

Create a workflow file (ie. .github/workflows/issue-metrics.yml) in your repository with the following contents:

Note: repo:owner/repo is the repository you want to measure metrics on

name: Monthly issue metrics
on:
  workflow_dispatch:
  schedule:
    - cron: '3 2 1 * *'

permissions:
  contents: read

jobs:
  build:
    name: issue metrics
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      issues: write
      pull-requests: read
    steps:
    - name: Get dates for last month
      shell: bash
      run: |
        # Calculate the first day of the previous month
        first_day=$(date -d "last month" +%Y-%m-01)

        # Calculate the last day of the previous month
        last_day=$(date -d "$first_day +1 month -1 day" +%Y-%m-%d)

        #Set an environment variable with the date range
        echo "$first_day..$last_day"
        echo "last_month=$first_day..$last_day" >> "$GITHUB_ENV"

    - name: Run issue-metrics tool
      uses: github/issue-metrics@v3
      env:
        GH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
        SEARCH_QUERY: 'repo:owner/repo is:issue created:${{ env.last_month }} -reason:"not planned"'

    - name: Create issue
      uses: peter-evans/create-issue-from-file@v5
      with:
        title: Monthly issue metrics report
        token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
        content-filepath: ./issue_metrics.md

Example use cases

• As a maintainer, I want to see metrics for issues and pull requests on the repository I maintain in order to ensure I am giving them the proper amount of attention.
• As a first responder on a repository, I want to ensure that users are getting contact from me in a reasonable amount of time.
• As an OSPO, I want to see how many open source repository requests are open/closed, and metrics for how long it takes to get through the open source process.
• As a product development team, I want to see metrics around how long pull request reviews are taking, so that we can reflect on that data during retrospectives.

Support

If you need support using this project or have questions about it, please open up an issue in this repository. Requests made directly to GitHub staff or support team will be redirected here to open an issue. GitHub SLA's and support/services contracts do not apply to this repository.

OSPO GitHub Actions as a Whole

All feedback regarding our GitHub Actions, as a whole, should be communicated through issues on our github-ospo repository.

Use as a GitHub Action

1. Create a repository to host this GitHub Action or select an existing repository. This is easiest if it is the same repository as the one you want to measure metrics on.
2. Select a best fit workflow file from the examples directory for your use case.
3. Copy that example into your repository (from step 1) and into the proper directory for GitHub Actions: .github/workflows/ directory with the file extension .yml (ie. .github/workflows/issue-metrics.yml)
4. Edit the values (SEARCH_QUERY, assignees) from the sample workflow with your information. See the SEARCH_QUERY section for more information on how to configure the search query.
5. If you are running metrics on a repository other than the one where the workflow file is going to be, then update the value of GH_TOKEN.
   • Do this by creating a GitHub API token with permissions to read the repository and write issues.
   • Then take the value of the API token you just created, and create a repository secret where the name of the secret is GH_TOKEN and the value of the secret the API token.
   • Then finally update the workflow file to use that repository secret by changing GH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }} to GH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GH_TOKEN }}. The name of the secret can really be anything. It just needs to match between when you create the secret name and when you refer to it in the workflow file.
6. If you want the resulting issue with the metrics in it to appear in a different repository other than the one the workflow file runs in, update the line token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }} with your own GitHub API token stored as a repository secret.
   • This process is the same as described in the step above. More info on creating secrets can be found here.
7. Commit the workflow file to the default branch (often master or main)
8. Wait for the action to trigger based on the schedule entry or manually trigger the workflow as shown in the documentation.

Configuration

Below are the allowed configuration options:

Authentication

This action can be configured to authenticate with GitHub App Installation or Personal Access Token (PAT). If all configuration options are provided, the GitHub App Installation configuration has precedence. You can choose one of the following methods to authenticate:

GitHub App Installation

field	required	default	description
GH_APP_ID	True	""	GitHub Application ID. See documentation for more details.
GH_APP_INSTALLATION_ID	True	""	GitHub Application Installation ID. See documentation for more details.
GH_APP_PRIVATE_KEY	True	""	GitHub Application Private Key. See documentation for more details.

Personal Access Token (PAT)

field	required	default	description
GH_TOKEN	True	""	The GitHub Token used to scan the repository. Must have read access to all repository you are interested in scanning.

Other Configuration Options

field	required	default	description
GH_ENTERPRISE_URL	False	""	URL of GitHub Enterprise instance to use for auth instead of github.com
HIDE_AUTHOR	False	False	If set to true, the author will not be displayed in the generated Markdown file.
HIDE_LABEL_METRICS	False	False	If set to true, the time in label metrics will not be displayed in the generated Markdown file.
HIDE_TIME_TO_ANSWER	False	False	If set to true, the time to answer a discussion will not be displayed in the generated Markdown file.
HIDE_TIME_TO_CLOSE	False	False	If set to true, the time to close will not be displayed in the generated Markdown file.
HIDE_TIME_TO_FIRST_RESPONSE	False	False	If set to true, the time to first response will not be displayed in the generated Markdown file.
IGNORE_USERS	False	False	A comma separated list of users to ignore when calculating metrics. (ie. IGNORE_USERS: 'user1,user2'). To ignore bots, append [bot] to the user (ie. IGNORE_USERS: 'github-actions[bot]')
ENABLE_MENTOR_COUNT	False	False	If set to 'TRUE' count number of comments users left on discussions, issues and PRs and display number of active mentors
MIN_MENTOR_COMMENTS	False	10	Minimum number of comments to count as a mentor
MAX_COMMENTS_EVAL	False	20	Maximum number of comments per thread to evaluate for mentor stats
HEAVILY_INVOLVED_CUTOFF	False	3	Cutoff after which a mentor's comments in one issue are no longer counted against their total score
LABELS_TO_MEASURE	False	""	A comma separated list of labels to measure how much time the label is applied. If not provided, no labels durations will be measured. Not compatible with discussions at this time.
SEARCH_QUERY	True	""	The query by which you can filter issues/PRs which must contain a repo:, org:, owner:, or a user: entry. For discussions, include type:discussions in the query.

Further Documentation

• Example workflows
• Measuring time spent in labels
• Assigning teams instead of individuals
• Example using the JSON output instead of the Markdown output
• Configuring the SEARCH_QUERY
• Local usage without Docker
• Authenticating with GitHub App Installation
• Dealing with large issue_metrics.md files

Contributions

We would ❤️ contributions to improve this action. Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for how to get involved.

License

MIT

More OSPO Tools

Looking for more resources for your open source program office (OSPO)? Check out the github-ospo repoistory for a variety of tools designed to support your needs.