Connect project management metrics from Jira to strategy in Cascade

Whether you’re a strategic leader responsible for monitoring and optimizing the performance of IT or a project executive handling IT projects and timelines, bringing your IT metrics closer to your strategy will help you drive faster results and improve the efficiency of your resources.

Integrate Jira with Cascade to bring visibility on your key metrics like project progress, on-time completion rate, project timelines, project costs and budget, incident handling, and so on. With this integration, you can automatically update your actions in Cascade, and report accurate progress on your strategic objectives.

Eliminate the need to go back and forth between Cascade and Jira accounts. Keep your data up-to-date, accurate, and right where you need it. Save time spent on reporting and monitoring your strategy.

Being that one source of truth with centralized access to all company data, Cascade provides the ability to transform statistical information into actionable insights and a compelling narrative with effective data storytelling.

Prerequisites

Before you establish the connection, it is important that these prerequisites are met:

Cascade:

  • A valid paid account and workspace in Cascade.

  • An 'Action' that is associated with your 'Objective' in the plan that you created in Cascade, and want to link to the Epic issue in your Jira account.

Jira:

  • A valid Jira account with the relevant Epic task, its child and sub-tasks.

Integrate Jira with Cascade:

Step 1: Connect your Jira with Cascade

It is important to establish a connection between Jira and Cascade to start integrating the actions. This connection can then be used by all the other actions in that workspace which have their progress in Jira.

From Integrations > Metrics & measures tab, click Connect in Jira. Give the connection a name, and set it up as a private or shared connection.

Follow the instructions to connect your Jira account with Cascade.

A private connection can be used by only the person who created it, while a shared connection can be seen and used by everyone in your account for automating action's progress.

On successful authentication, the connection is added. With the same connection, you can now start managing your actions, and track progress of the issues in Jira within Cascade.

Step 2: Sync the progress of actions in Jira to the relevant actions in Cascade

Now, to sync the progress made in Jira to an action in Cascade, you’ll need to get those details into the Cascade workspace.

  1. From the Edit action sidebar, choose tracking as Jira.

  2. Either choose an existing connection, or create one to establish a connection between Jira and Cascade.

  3. Select Paste Issue Link if you wish to just paste the URL link from Jira. Copy it from the Epic issue's Share icon in Jira and paste it in the Issue URL box. Or, select Search Issue if you want to search for the issue rather than copy-pasting the link. Select the workspace, project, and the issue that you want to link from Jira from the auto-populated drop-down list.

  4. Click Save to complete the integration.

Refer Integrate Jira with Cascade article for detailed information.

You have now successfully enabled the tracking. Once hooked up, it'll automatically update with the most current value. The sync happens every one hour, and you can click Refresh sync now to poll the data immediately.

Some tips:

  • This is a native integration, only few actions are available with it. If you wish to pull some other metrics from Jira, then you can do it via Zapier. See How to Use Zapier with Cascade to establish a connection between Zapier and Cascade.

    • Create a zap to automate the workflow between Jira and Cascade.

    • Set up the relevant trigger from Jira.

    • Note the value that needs to be mapped to Cascade’s action.

    • Now, add the step to update current progress of action in Cascade.

    • Select the workspace, plan, and action details in Cascade.

    • Choose the action value from the triggered values obtained from the Jira event.

    You can also run a query to fetch a dataset from Jira to decide on what values you need to bring into Cascade. To understand the different triggers from Jira, troubleshooting, and other related help information with the Jira-Zapier workflows, please search for "Jira" in the Zapier Help Center.

    You've now successfully established the trigger and action. Now, with ease and no efforts from you, your values will get updated automatically in Cascade, every time the relevant event is triggered in Jira.

  • You can only bring numerical values from Jira. Keep that in mind while you're connecting the applications to bring over the data.

Benefits

This integration provides you with all the elements for an effective “data storytelling”.

  • Bring precise and up-to-date “data”: Track the progress precisely and on time with automatic sync between the Jira issues and the actions in Cascade.

  • Build engaging “visuals”: Visualize the progress with the relevant widgets and custom charts in the dashboards.

  • Create compelling “narratives”: Build reports to make guided decisions based on the progress made in these actions and thereby the objectives in the plans.

You can seamlessly integrate Cascade into the workflow of your business without ever having to disrupt the tools that you and your team are using to work effectively and efficiently. Try it yourself for free (Free trial signup) or connect with our teams (Cascade Support) to help set this up.

FAQs

I'm getting a "Connection does not work" error message.

In this case, the best option is to delete your connection and reconnect. Go to Integrations and use the trash icon to delete the connection. Follow the preceding instructions to set up a new connection. See How to delete a connection section in Collaborate and Automate with Integrations for details.

Why does it say "Unable to connect?"

Make sure that the Jira workspace has real data. Cascade can't sync with an empty workspace or account.

Does Cascade data affect Jira data?

No, the integration is one-way. Nothing you do in Cascade will change values in Jira.

How does Jira measure progress?

Refer to this article from the Jira team