Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Why You Should Integrate Salesforce and Jira
- How Teams Benefit From Salesforce Jira Integration
- Selecting the Right Way to Integrate Salesforce and Jira
- What Are the Possible Ways to Integrate Salesforce and Jira?
- Custom Integration vs. Connector: Which Is Right?
- Stakeholders & Business Requirements
- Setting Up Salesforce Jira Integration
- Sinergify Use-Cases
Introduction
One tool is never sufficient for multiple teams working in an organization. Hence, a number of tools are used to manage operations.
However, this leads to disconnected employees and teams. This is why improving team collaboration is a priority for organizations.
The preferred method to improve collaboration is by integrating workplace tools, such as Salesforce and Jira.
While Salesforce is the world’s number one CRM platform, Jira is a leading tool for issue tracking and project management.
Salesforce dominates customer relationship management (CRM) and Jira leads project management.
Why You Should Integrate Salesforce and Jira
In the quest for cross-functional collaboration, organizations strive to establish synergy. This has led to companies worldwide adopting both Salesforce and Jira.
However, to achieve coordination among teams utilizing these tools, there is a need for integration. Salesforce Jira integration provides a number of benefits, including:
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Improved Visibility & Collaboration:
Access a single source of truth for customer data. Improve collaboration and communication between teams and reduce errors.
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Automated Workflows:
Free up time to focus on strategic tasks and improve process efficiency.
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Better Decision-Making:
Access relevant data at one place. Make better decisions with regard to prioritizing and resolving customer issues. Improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.
How Teams Benefit From Salesforce Jira Integration
Here’s how Salesforce Jira integration benefits customer-facing teams:
Sales
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Give sales teams a single source of truth for customer data. Representatives will be able to see relevant customer data in one place, including support tickets, bug reports, and project updates. This gives sales reps a better understanding of customer issues and enables them to address them proactively. As a result, sales teams are able to improve customer satisfaction and increase sales opportunities.
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Streamline the sales process. By sharing real-time updates & feedback with other teams, sales reps ensure that everyone is on the same page and that the sales process is moving smoothly. This leads to shorter sales cycles and higher close rates.
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Enhance overall efficiency. By automating tasks and eliminating duplicate data entry, sales teams free up time to focus on strategic activities. This leads to increased productivity and an improved bottom line.
Customer Support
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Provide the support team with a holistic view of customer data. They will be able to directly access relevant sales data, customer history, and ongoing projects from Salesforce. This enables them to understand customer needs, prioritize support tickets, and resolve issues.
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Facilitate effective communication between support and other teams, enabling faster issue resolution and improved customer experiences.
Marketing
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Enable the marketing team to get valuable insight. They will be able to access customer data and feedback from Salesforce, helping them tailor marketing campaigns and strategies based on customer preferences and pain points.
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Facilitate collaboration between marketing and other teams, such as sales and support, ensuring consistent messaging and a unified approach towards customer engagement.
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Enable the team to leverage the integration for tracking the effectiveness of campaigns and initiatives, measuring customer satisfaction, and refining marketing efforts accordingly.
Here’s how Salesforce Jira integration benefits back-end teams:
Engineering/Product
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Enable the engineering/product team to have better visibility into customer requirements, feedback, and requests generated by sales, as well as issues submitted by the support team. They will be able to directly access relevant data within Jira, enabling them to prioritize and address product enhancements, bug fixes, and new feature requests effectively.
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Streamline communication between engineering/product and other teams, ensuring a seamless flow of data and facilitating collaboration throughout the product development lifecycle.
Selecting the Right Way to Integrate Salesforce and Jira
When selecting an integration between Salesforce and Jira, the following points should be considered:
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Reliability:
The integration should be reliable and work as expected. It is important to have operational maintenance capabilities.
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Security:
Security is a top priority. The integration should go through rigorous testing to ensure that it has no defects. This helps eliminate system vulnerabilities, secure data, and ensure business continuity.
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Autonomy:
The integration should provide the ability to control what data is being exchanged and how it is being interpreted. Any change in configuration shouldn’t break the integration.
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Flexibility & Scalability:
The integration should be flexible and scalable so that it is carried out in a way that aligns with business needs and processes.
What Are the Possible Ways to Integrate Salesforce and Jira?
There are two ways to integrate Salesforce and Jira:
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Integration via Custom Coding
A one-time solution that involves coding to integrate both tools, the integration allows the transfer of data from Salesforce to Jira, and vice-versa. However, you will be unable to implement more use-cases. If your aim is to just transfer data, then go for custom integration.
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Integration via a Connector
Using a connector, the integration would involve a tool to integrate Salesforce and Jira using their APIs. You’ll be able to implement more use-cases, as well as enable the exchange of data between both platforms. If your aim is to get more out of your integration than a mere exchange of data, then a connector is what you need.
Experience the simplest, fastest, and most secure way to integrate Salesforce and Jira.
Custom Integration vs. Connector: Which Is Right?
A connector facilitates the exchange of data and unlocks the potential for more sophisticated interactions between Salesforce and Jira.
It enables enhanced automation, real-time synchronization, and streamlined workflows.
Whether you’re dealing with sales, customer service, development, or project management, a connector enables you to make the most out of Salesforce Jira integration.
From creating automated processes for sales leads to generating Jira issues from customer support cases, a connector offers comprehensive and future-proof integration.
While custom coding may serve basic data transfer needs, a connector takes integration to the next level, empowering you with a wide range of use-cases.
If you’re looking for more than just data exchange and want to optimize processes and workflows, a connector is the ideal choice.
Stakeholders and Business Requirements
| Custom coding | Connector |
|---|---|
| You’ll need to build bi-directional communication, involving comments, feeds, and attachments, separately. | You’ll get out-of-the-box, real-time sync for comments/feeds/files. Teams will be able to communicate with each other and pass on the right data at the right time. |
| The absence of real-time updates will lead to support delays, resulting in increased resolution time. | Real-time Jira updates will be available in Salesforce, reducing case duration and increasing customer satisfaction. |
| The engineering team will have no visibility inside Salesforce on the Jira side. They will need to wait for support agents to reply. | The engineering team will be able to view Salesforce details, comments, and feeds within Jira. |
| In case of notifications, implementing time-based sync will create bulk notifications for agents. | Real-time sync will enable sending notifications on genuine updates at the right time. |
| You’ll need to wait to implement new requirements. | You can enable new projects/mapping as per business requirements. |
| Reports are rigid. You cannot expect more data as per needs at the appropriate time. | You’ll be able to use Jira data in Salesforce reports of mapped fields. |
| Teams will need separate budgets and time to get use-cases implemented. | You’ll be able to cover all use-cases where teams need to integrate with Jira and everything is available out-of-the-box. You’ll need to spend on some complex logic as per requirements but most functionalities will be available. |
Business Analysts/Admins
| Custom coding | Connector |
|---|---|
| You’ll have little control over BAs/Admins to implement changes on urgent requests. They’ll need to follow the development process to make required changes. | Admins have full access to settings where they can enable/change new projects and mappings, and modify sync behavior. |
| BAs/Admins will be dependent on Jira Admins to know about changes they are making and then run them through the Salesforce Dev team. To avoid breaking the integration, Jira teams will need to include BAs/Admins and need their confirmation. This will cause delays. | This is an automated/one-click solution to synchronize meta-data change in Salesforce. There are no delays by Jira and Salesforce teams to sync new data. |
| Once systems are live, teams hesitate to bring change until it’s urgent, since multiple teams are involved. | Everything is configurable with simple clicks. The team readily identifies new use-cases that can be set up easily. |
Development
| Custom coding | Connector |
|---|---|
| You’ll only be able to carry out basic authorization. For token-based Auth, separate UI and development are required. If your Jira is behind SSO, you’ll be unable to use basic Auth. | A connector supports both types of authentication. |
|
A connector has a codeless approach. Everything is easily configurable and supported by relevant documentation and knowledge-base articles. |
| Maintenance is required. There are no features. Only basic requirements are available. | You’ll get the ability to create, link, search, and get out-of-the-box automation such as rule set, validation, and metadata sync. |
| Separate development efforts are required for integration and UI/UX. | Get production-ready, dynamic, and interactive Lightning-ready UI/UX without development. |
| You’ll need to carry out complex bi-directional development. | Get access to real-time bi-directional updates. |
| Development will get added in the org governor limits. | A connector works with separate limits. You’ll get full resources for important activities. |
| You’ll have little support. Any change will be a CR. | You’ll have product support, online documentation, and video. |
| Building basic integration with UI/UX will cost up to 200-450 hours, which is equivalent to $10k-$20k. | You’ll get a flat cost for unlimited users and free upgrades with new features. |
Setting Up Salesforce Jira Integration
At Grazitti, we’ve built Sinergify. It enables you to integrate standard and custom objects from Salesforce products (Service, Sales, Community Cloud) with Jira products (Core, Ops, Software, Service Desk) hosted on cloud or on-premises versions.
Step 1: Get the Sinergify Package
To install Sinergify, you’ll need to get the product package from our team or download it from Salesforce AppExchange.
Sinergify is a Salesforce-native connector, therefore, it needs to be installed in the Salesforce Org.
Step 2: Install the Sinergify Package in Your Salesforce Org
A Salesforce Admin is able to install Sinergify in your Salesforce Org. You’ll need a license key that our team will provide, along with an installation guide to help the Admin complete the installation.
Step 3: Configure Sinergify to Enable the Integration
Here’s the step-by-step procedure to configure Sinergify:
1. The Sinergify Console
The Sinergify console provides a UI for Salesforce Admins to configure & maintain the integration.
After installation, the console will be accessible directly as an app on the Salesforce instance.
2. Admin Settings
For Admin Settings, enter details such as Jira URL, username, and password to enable integration between Salesforce and Jira.
Select the relationship between both instances and whether your Jira instance is hosted on-premises or on the cloud.
3. Projects
There are a number of projects in a Salesforce Org. This functionality enables you to sync Jira issues and assign projects under which you want issues to be synced.
Select the projects that you want Jira issues to be synced with.
4. Field Configuration
Here, you can implement Jira field mapping. There are some fields that have been mapped by default.
If there are other Jira fields you want to map in Salesforce, it can be done from here. These fields will be visible while creating a Jira issue from Salesforce.
Here, you can select fields that you want to mark as required when users create a new Jira issue or link a Salesforce case with a Jira issue.
5. Validation
6. Rule Set
Here, you can define a rule that will be applied to Salesforce cases and Jira issues.
Once you are done with the above-mentioned steps, your Salesforce and Jira integration will be live.
Sinergify Use-Cases
Sinergify offers use-cases for Salesforce Jira integration. Let’s take a look:
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Create Jira Issues from Salesforce
In cases where support agents need assistance from the engineering/product team, support agents can create a new Jira issue from the case details page.
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Notify Case Owner of Jira Updates
Whenever there’s an update on a Jira issue from the engineering/product team, you can send a notification to the case owner in Salesforce about every update on the Jira side.
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Search and Link Jira Issues from Salesforce
If a customer case seems familiar, support agents can search for similar Jira issues using search. In case a similar issue exists, they can link that case to the Jira issue.
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Centralize All Updates (On Both Jira & SFDC Side)
After creating a Jira issue for a case, if there are any changes on the Salesforce side such as case status or priority, you can automatically sync updates from Salesforce to Jira so that there’s no discrepancy in data on both sides.
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Make Jira Feeds Visible to Customers
This is an on-demand functionality for businesses who want to make Jira feeds visible to their customers via communities.
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Update Case Status of Resolved Jira Issues
Once a Jira issue is marked as resolved by the engineering/product team, the status of the cases on the Salesforce side will be updated accordingly.
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Sync Attachments and Comments
Sinergify enables bidirectional syncing of attachments and comments from Salesforce to Jira, and vice-versa.
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Update Jira Status/Transition via Salesforce
Users can change the status of Jira issues from Salesforce without switching to Jira. If Jira transition screens are available, the same can be handled in Salesforce.
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Control Feed Items
Users can use the feed to link a case to a Jira issue by using a hashtag from the case details page and send feed content as a comment or attachment using a hashtag.
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Auto-Create Jira Issues
Avoid manual effort by using inbuilt methods in Apex Triggers and Process Builder to automatically create a Jira issue.
To know how Sinergify enables you with effective collaboration between support and backend teams, watch a demo or take a free trial, here.
To know more, please write to us at [email protected] and we’ll take it from there. You can also check Sinergify out on AppExchange.
