6 Tips for Creating a Jira and Asana Integration (+ Guide)
If you’re anywhere near the tech world (or my LinkedIn profile), you’ve probably heard of Jira and Asana.
Both are project management applications that are widely used and which are often used together. So if you’re looking to connect Asana and Jira via an integration (or just trying to decide between the two), you’re in the right place. In this post, we’re going to break down:
- The differences between Asana and Jira
- How to connect the applications using an Jira Asana integration
- Other ways to connect your teams with integrations
Which is better – Jira or Asana?
Deciding which application to use comes down to what you’d like to use it for. There are some instances where Jira’s the right tool and other’s where you’d be better off using Asana.
Jira Overview
Jira is often used for technical projects like software development, bug tracking, or engineering project management. Founded in April 2002 in Sydney, Australia, by parent company Atlassian, the product was instantly successful and has become one of the most popular project management tools for organizations that use Agile methodologies, according to the 16th Annual State of Agile report.
When to use Jira
Jira might be the right choice for you if:
- You need a solution for your DevOps or engineering team. Though it can (and is!) used by many other team types, Jira has specific features that are designed for those use cases.
- Your focus is issue tracking. It’s even in the name – you don’t create tasks in Jira, you create Issues
- You need more advanced features. Jira offers features like scrum boards as well as offering dependencies and task estimates.
Popular Jira Features
Jira offers many helpful features that make it a favorite for project managers, including:
- Scrum or Kanban views – Having two different views allows you to set up your project in the way that works best for your team and its workflow.
- Rules and automation – Creating rules and automation takes some of the manual work of Jira, like assigning to another team member or transitioning statuses, off of the people so you can spend more time executing the things that matter.
- Custom fields and statuses – One size does NOT fit all and Jira knows that, too! With the ability to create custom fields to track data or statuses unique to your organization, Jira allows you to customize and track your project in a way that gets you the information you care about.
Asana Overview
Asana is used for more general project management by teams like Marketing, Customer Success, or Product. Founded in 2008 in San Francisco, CA, the product launched in April 2012. Asana’s flexible platform allows users to create workflows that work best for their needs.
When to use Asana
You might consider Asana if:
- You have more general project management needs. Asana has fewer engineering-specific tools, but it’s more general built means that you can use it for other teams, like Marketing or Design.
- You want better in-app collaboration. Asana offers a built-in chat feature and lets you instantly start a chat or create a one-on-one project by hovering over a user’s name, letting you use Asana for communication rather than email.
- You want the team onboarded quickly. Asana is generally a bit easier to learn and easier to set up fast. If you have a small team that you’d like to quickly move into a project management application, then Asana is a good choice.
Popular Asana features:
Asana allows users to create easy, customizable workflows thanks to features like:
- Different views – Similar to Jira, Asana offers multiple view options, like List and Kanban, so that users can organize and view information in a way that works best for them and their team.
- Subtasks – Sometimes, you need to break down the work. By allowing users to create subtasks, Asana encourages accountability and time management by taking bigger tasks and allowing them to be completed in bite-sized pieces.
- Assignees and filters – Asana allows you to assign tasks and subtasks to teammates and enables users to filter by a teammate in the main view of a project. This set of features makes allocating work and tracking who is working on which tasks is easy.
Does Asana have a Jira integration?
Yes, Asana does have a Jira integration, which you can install from Asana’s Jira Cloud page. The integration offers a two-way sync between Asana and Jira so that you can automatically update a task from one application in the other. You can also create Jira tickets from within Asana.
Overall, the integration offers an easy way to allow technical and non-technical teams to work together seamlessly in their preferred application.
6 Tips for a Jira & Asana Integration
Integrating Jira and Asana allows an organization to combine the strengths of both platforms to create a singular world that multiple departments or teams can work out of without impeding on each other’s workflows. Connecting the two platforms allows teams to achieve many different tasks without having to master two separate platforms. Here are some benefits and need-to-know tips for best leveraging an integration between Jira and Asana.
1. Improve communication between teams
Integrating two powerful applications like Jira and Asana allows for seamless collaboration between the two products and sharing of data that might otherwise be separate or siloed. But to facilitate this improved collaboration, you must integrate the two platforms thoughtfully. (More on how to do that in the next section.)
When setting up your platform, you’ll want to avoid configurations that complicate your workflow by sending over duplicate data or forcing redundant communication between teams about what task is in which status, what needs to be done, what needs to happen next, etc. Properly integrating the two applications allows you to get the information you need (and nothing more) without needing direct access to both platforms.
2 . Stay in the “world” you love most
Your Jira and Asana integration should allow you to stay in the platform that you’re the most comfortable with. For instance, using Asana’s app-integration capability to integrate with Jira allows users in Jira to see which tasks in Asana coincide with Jira work. Users in Asana can also create tasks in Jira while still in Asana. This streamlined workflow allows for easy visibility between teams while staying in the apps they feel most comfortable with and protecting their project ecosystems while allowing collaboration.
3. Make sure the fields you need will sync properly
Many fields sync from Asana to Jira, but a few aren’t supported. It’s important to note that other fields only sync from Jira to Asana. Before integrating, you’ll want to ensure the fields you need will sync. You will also need to ensure that users have permission in Jira and Asana to create new issues and work with the fields most beneficial to your teams.
4. Understand your team’s workflow
A Jira and Asana integration might not be the best solution for every organization. Even though the two applications remain separate, allowing for the transfer of information between the two can lead to confusion for certain projects.
While each platform guides how to get the most out of the integration, like Asana’s reference chart that outlines how a field in that platform shows up in Jira, the value of the integration should still be a discussion that happens with thought to the goals and outcomes of the project.
5. Translating between two apps might be more trouble than it’s worth
Each application has its own jargon and status structure, so marrying the two worlds might require more mapping and translation than project leaders are willing to do. For example, a Jira Sprint can be exported to Asana, but a Sprint cannot be created in Asana and pushed back to Jira. Sometimes, this one-way communication might create more trouble than it’s worth.
6. Think about which platform works best for each team
At Visor, we use both Jira and Asana, so we’re no strangers to the incredible capabilities of both platforms. Our organization uses Asana to track one-on-one meetings, individual tasks, and design projects. We also use Jira to track our engineering tasks and projects because of Jira’s ability to integrate well with GitHub (we’ll save that integration for another day).
Since our Product and Design teams work in Asana, we’ll often link the Asana tasks to the corresponding engineering tickets in Jira. Linking tasks allows the Engineering team to see where Design and Product work is in the process so they have a good idea of what’s coming down the pipeline and when a project will be ready for coding.
Step-by-Step Guide for Setting Up a Jira & Asana Integration
Step 1: To integrate the Jira Cloud app with Asana, you need a Jira Cloud account and edit access to the Jira project you are working with.
Step 2: In Asana, navigate to the “Customize” button in the top-right corner of your Asana project screen.
Step 3: From there, navigate to Apps and click “Add App.” Select Jira Cloud and then click “Add to project”. You can then authorize your Jira account. Asana users can open an Asana task, create a Jira issue from Asana, or link to an existing Jira issue.
Step 4: To sync data from the Jira Cloud to Asana, you can decide whether you want to update information from Asana to Jira, from Jira to Asana, or on a project level only. Inside Asana, you will see an option to choose your integration preferences.
Step 5: To sync data from the Jira Cloud to Asana, you can decide whether you want to update information from Asana to Jira, from Jira to Asana, or on a project level only. Inside Asana, you will see an option to choose your integration preferences.
For teams leveraging Jira Server, Asana offers a plugin for Jira integrations. Not only is this a more complicated process, but Atlassian will no longer support Jira Server by February 2024. Jira Data Center users also have a separate integration process, as noted by Asana in its documentation.
Other Ways to Connect Teams With Integrations
Integrating Jira and Asana isn’t the only way to connect teams with different priorities and workflows in your organization.
Some tools, like Visor, offer a bi-directional Jira integration that can pull in information from your favorite project management software, like Jira, and push data back out.
Since the integrations with Visor are bidirectional, you can draft Jira issues, add custom fields that only live in Visor and don’t sync to Jira, use Jira data to create visual datasets like resource allocation graphs or Gantt charts, or color-code by key fields such as assignee or status.
Unlike most project management systems, Visor requires minimal training or onboarding since the application features an easy-to-use spreadsheet, making it accessible to all team members regardless of technical ability.
If you need extra support, Visor’s Customer Success team will happily book a quick 30-minute chat or training session. You can reach us via chat in the Visor app.