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How to link work in Jira Software to goals and projects powered by Atlas
How to link work in Jira Software to goals and projects powered by Atlas

Help teams understand how work drives business outcomes and boost team-to-team communication with our Jira Software integration.

Mark Parnell avatar
Written by Mark Parnell
Updated over 2 months ago

We believe that every team should understand their role in achieving business success, to stay inspired, motivated, and unified under a shared mission. We also believe that by connecting work to goals, teams can independently identify and pursue new opportunities with confidence.

Our Jira Software integration enables teams to connect goals and projects powered by Atlas to Jira Software issues, so teams can understand how their work drives outcomes, and anyone can get a summary of the latest progress of work. This is available to all Jira Software users who have setup Atlas.

The integration brings new value to your Jira Software experience in the form of goals and communicating status updates.

⚠️ The integration currently only supports Jira Software Cloud. We are exploring supporting additional Jira products like Jira Work Management, Jira Product Discovery, and Jira Service Management.

Recap: What’s the difference between Atlas and Jira Software?

We built Atlas to help everyone - across all teams - understand the what, why, who, and how of work, at a top level. Jira Software, on the other hand, is designed for planning and task management within teams, at a granular level.

The level of detail required when communicating to each of those audiences is very different. To learn more about the relationship between Atlas and Jira Software, check out this article.

⤵️ Jump ahead:

How to link goals to Jira Software issues

⚠️ Linking a goal doesn't change how your Jira Software projects or issues operate.

Currently, you can link goals to any Jira Software issues.

Got a suggestion based on the hierarchy model in your organization? Join our Community and let us know!

From your Jira Software issue, click the Linked Goals button at the top of the issue (hint: this might be hidden in the ... menu!).

This will display a section on the issue’s main body, called Linked Goals. Use the text box to search for an existing goal or create a new one.

This links the goal with your Jira Software issue so that you can visualize the outcomes that work is contributing to. This also adds two custom fields to your Jira Software Cloud instance, which can be used for additional reporting:

  1. Atlas goal key

  2. Atlas goal status

We’re working on showing how goals connect to Jira Software issues from within Atlas, and more aggregated reporting for goals. Stay tuned!

How to link projects to Jira Software issues

⚠️ You can connect projects to Jira Software issues on the epic level or above. Need more flexibility based on the hierarchy model in your organization? Join our Community and let us know!

From Atlas

We support connecting project to Jira Software issues on the epic level or above. Throughout this section we'll refer to these as "Jira Software issues" for simplicity.

When you add a link to a Jira Software issue to the Where is the work tracked? field on a project in Atlas, you'll be prompted to sync that project with the issue.

If you dismiss the banner, you'll still be able to sync with Jira later by clicking the pencil icon next to your Jira issue link and hitting the Sync with Jira Software button.

From Jira Software

From your Jira Software issue, click into the Status Updates field to link or create a new project in your Atlas workspace.

When you link a project powered by Atlas to a Jira Software issue, you’ll be asked to confirm which details you’d like to sync.

  • name

  • target dates

  • tags

For each, you'll be able to choose if you want to sync the information in Atlas or in Jira Software.

There is a 1:1 mapping between a project powered by Atlas and a Jira Software issue. If you’d like to add more links to your project in Atlas without syncing them, we recommend using the Related Links field.

⚠️ Currently, you can sync a single Jira Software issue 1:1 to a project powered by Atlas. We’re working on bringing projects across different types of Jira Software issues. Got a suggestion based on the hierarchy model in your organization? Join our Community and let us know!

Once linked these details will be kept in sync. In Atlas, you’ll see the Jira Software issue name and status appear under the Where is work tracked? field.

The app syncs target dates to Jira’s system fields, which can be used in roadmaps. This integration adds two custom fields to your Jira Software Cloud instance, which can be used for additional reporting:

  1. Atlas project key

  2. Atlas project status

If a date is changed in either Jira Software or Atlas, Atlas will provide that context in the relevant project update.

From your Jira Software issue in the Share updates about this work field, you'll see the connected Atlas project’s name, status, latest update, and overview.

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