The following are frequently asked questions regarding our Project Insight to JIRA connector.

Project Creation:

In reviewing the PI Integration for JIRA video, it looks like a project will need to be created in JIRA first then it will be added to a JIRA folder in Project Insight.

Question: Where does the project need to be created first- JIRA or Project Insight?
Answer: You must have a project in both JIRA and PI. You can create a blank project in either system and hook it up and sync everything over from either side. The integration was built with the intention of hooking up already existing projects in both systems.

Question: If in JIRA and then synced to PI, if we move the project to a different folder does it retain the linkage?
Answer: Yes, the link is retained.

Scrum Methodology in JIRA vs by project in Project Insight:

In a scrum methodology in JIRA, the team would work off a single team backlog (or in JIRA a single project) for potentially multiple projects. While in Project Insight, our current method is that we created separate projects for budgeting and costing which holds the backlog for the project.

Question: If we created a custom field (or component) to capture a PI Project in JIRA, could we send that Issue (or Epic, Story, Task) back to the appropriate project or will it just go back to single project?
Answer: There is no need to create a custom field to capture the PI project in JIRA. When setting up a project in JIRA that project can have multiple epics, sprints in those epics, and tasks on those sprints. When you have two projects set up with this structure you can place sprints from Project 1 onto epics from Project 2 and vice versa. This cross-project epic sprint relationship is maintained.

Task Creation:

As you create an Issue (Epic/Story/Task/Subtask) in JIRA the task will be created under “JIRA Issue” (summary task).

Question: If we move that task from “JIRA issue” summary task to the “Sprint X” summary task in PI, does the issue retain the linkage?
Answer: Sprints are part of a separate Agile features enabled portion of a project. Sprints are not translated as summary tasks in PI, they are separate entities and have a separate view associated with them than the task list. However moving any synced PI <-> JIRA task to a different parent sprint or moving it from the backlog to a sprint will keep the tasks in sync and reflect the changed parent in both systems.

Question: With the understanding that you create an epic which could be made up of multiple stories which then further are broken down to tasks, how does Project Insight handle this… do all of them come over as individual tasks?
Answer: Yes. The epic comes over as a summary task. The stories under the epic are first-level subtasks. The tasks under the stories are second-level subtasks. You must have the ‘maintain hierarchy’ checked. Otherwise they will come over flat.

Question: In JIRA, you can only have one assignee… What happens you have multiple assignees in project Insight and send that to JIRA? Do we need to create group or do we need to duplicate the tasks with single assignee?
Answer: There is a Integration-level option to ‘allow multiple resources on a task’. With this checked you may have additional resources on a PI <-> JIRA linked task. The task owner is the assignee in JIRA, the additional resources are not known about in JIRA.
If this is not checked, then any additional resources put on a linked task in PI will be removed during any automatic sync for that task (i.e. description is changed, comments are added, work is logged etc.)
Please note: If you are tracking time with additional resources on a linked task the total hours on the task will not stay in sync between PI and JIRA.
For instance: Assignee logs 2 hours in JIRA, these sync as two hours for the task owner in PI. Total Hours JIRA: 2, Total Hours PI: 2
An additional resource logs 4 hours in PI. This does not sync to JIRA, since JIRA doesn’t know this resource exists. Total Hours JIRA: 2, Total Hours PI: 6
Task owner in PI logs 1 hour in PI. Since only the owners are in sync, know about each other, this is reflected. Total Hours JIRA: 3, Total Hours PI: 7

Question: If we had to create a group JIRA, what do we need to do in Project Insight?
Answer: To be clear, groups in JIRA are used to establish permissions. JIRA users can only view what their group permissions allow them to view or do. For a JIRA user’s actions to be reflected in PI (i.e. any time logged, comments made, issues assigned, etc.) they must be explicitly mapped on the JIRA Integration’s user mapping page in PI. If they are mapped their actions will be reflected in PI and JIRA appropriately.

Question: Can you restrict which type of issues (Epic, Story, Task, Subtask) that come over? For example, we may NOT want Sub-task to come over to Project Insight, however we still like to capture any hours associated to those Subtasks to roll up to the Task level in PI
Answer: There is no way to restrict types of issues that come over. To accomplish this you would need to turn off the ‘Automatically add all JIRA issues, tasks, stories into PI tasks’ option on the PI project configuration. And then manually sync each issue that you want to come into PI. You could sync the summary task and not the Sub-tasks this way.

Sprint Creation:

In Both Project Insight and JIRA, we can establish Sprints.

Question: If you start a sprint in Project Insight, does JIRA know that you started it sprint and create it? Vice versa… if you create a sprint in JIRA, does Project Insight know and establish the sprint and time box dates?
Answer: Creation: If you automatically sync checked for the project, a sprint creation with be reflected in either system. If you don’t have automatically sync, you will need to do a manual sync of the project to have the sprint creation reflected.
Starting: PI does not have a concept of starting a sprint. You plan out the dates for your sprints to start and end (and change these dates as necessary). Your active sprint is the one whose dates include today.

Question: If I move the task to the sprint in Project Insight does it know to add it the sprint in JIRA? Vice versa… if you move the issue to a sprint in JIRA, does Project Insight know as puts it under the summary task “Sprint X”
Answer: Moving: Moving sprints in either system will correctly reflect the task -> sprint relationship change.
Sprints are part of a separate Agile features enabled portion of a project. Sprints are not translated as summary tasks in PI, they are separate entities and have a separate view associated with them than the task list.