Generic grid views with rows and columns defined by JQL queries

The rapid view really got my attention because I saw that grid and thought "aha, I bet the rows and columns can be defined by any arbitrary JQL statements"... then I looked at the documentation and it appears that the columns must map to status values.

But it is close to a generic grid control for viewing JIRA issues.

I have a use case for such a generic grid control. Our group uses JIRA for tracking a variety of government decision-making tasks. Things like the decision process for deciding whether a species should be listed as threatened or endangered. These kind of processes have a lot of steps. It hasn't seemed very useful to create workflows for the detailed steps of these processes... but, it is possible to use JQL queries to sift out the processes that are in similar stages, for example, those processes that are under legal review. We would find it really useful to have a grid view of JIRA issues that we could configure with arbitrary JQL statements.

Of course we would want to be able to define multiple such views, with differing grid definitions. And we would want to be able to display these grids via dashboard gadgets.

Thanks for considering our request!