4 Jira Service Management Integration Options
Jira Service Management is one of the most common tools for IT service management (ITSM), allowing organizations to systematize the way their IT teams solve technical issues for internal end users or external clients. But while it’s a powerhouse for managing IT support workflows, Jira Service Management isn’t widely-used by other teams, teams that often need to interact with IT. That means data needs to be duplicated between tools, or someone involved in that workflow becomes responsible for passing information back and forth.
That’s why so many organizations depend on a Jira Service Management integration.
Why integrate Jira Service Management?
Put simply, integrations tear down tool silos, which keep teams isolated from collaborators. Silos both make it more difficult to work with other teams — making it less likely you’ll work with them — and keep essential data trapped unless someone is willing to do the manual work of copying it over.
That’s an especially serious problem with ITSM, where so much depends on providing a service quickly, efficiently, and accurately. That’s why integrating Jira Service Management is so important. It allows IT professionals to have all the information they need to do their job with a minimum of back-and-forth with end users, and other teams can check in on tickets when needed without leaving their tools.
Now let’s cover some of your best options for integrating Jira Service Management.
4 options for integrating Jira Service Management
Built-in integration with Jira
Since Jira and Jira Service Management are built on a common platform, you can natively connect Jira Service Management tickets with Jira issues and work across these tools. That means any team in Jira can check in on a ticket and contribute to it without relying on third-party integration software.
There are some differences users from both tools will have to get used to, but this is the easiest way to bring them together without breaking the bank.
Adding this integration to your Jira workspace is as simple as clicking through a few dropdown menus, meaning you can go from tool silos to a fully integrated workflow in minutes. You can get a full guide to deploying this integration from Atlassian’s documentation.
Two-way sync
Where many integration platforms essentially allow IT teams to set up complex chains of one-way actions — from creating new work items to updating a single field — a two-way sync gets you closer to working with two tools almost interchangeably. It creates real, deep relationships between work items so any updates made to one are automatically synced to the other.
Many of these solutions can be set up in a fraction of the time other platforms on this list will take, and they’ll get you a better integration in the long run.
Using a two-way sync solution with Jira Service Management means you can pair tickets from this tool with tasks in project management apps, customers in CRM tools, and deals in your sales pipeline. That way, your tickets have all the context your IT team needs without any back-and-forth between teams.
Best example: Unito
Unito is a two-way sync solution with some of the deepest integrations on the market for tools like Jira Service Management, Jira, Asana, Trello, GitHub, ServiceNow, and more. It’s easy to set up and deploy across teams — even for users with no technical background.
Automation platform
An automation platform is one of the simplest options for integrating two tools. It uses a trigger-based logic to perform single, straightforward actions across tools based on “if” and “then” statements. Here are some examples of what that might look like:
- If a new ticket is created in Jira Service Management, then send a message in a Slack channel.
- If a submission is received on Jotform, then create a new Jira Service Management ticket.
- If a BambooHR report is updated, then create a new Jira Service Management ticket.
You’ll notice something similar in all these examples: they all create a new object to match another. That’s because most automation platforms don’t offer the same depth of integrations as other solutions, meaning they can rarely update a wide breadth of fields in the tools you’re integrating. So while you won’t need to copy and paste data to create new objects, you’ll still have to find other ways to get updates and changes to travel between tools.
Best example: Zapier
Zapier is one of the most popular automation platforms on the market, with over 7,000 integrations, including one for Jira Service Management. With so many integrations, you can effectively connect your ITSM platform with just about any other tool your organization uses. Note that Zapier can’t really keep objects in these tools up to date unless you build a complex sequence of automations, which is why it’s best for automating the creation of ticket equivalents in other tools.
iPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service)
An integration platform as a service (or iPaaS) is a toolbox that allows technical teams to build and deploy the exact integrations they need in essentially the same way every time. It essentially marries the customization of building your own integration with the shortcuts of a third-party app. You can go into a lot more depth with this sort of integration than with an automation platform, fine-tuning your integration to meet your team’s exact needs. The tradeoff is you’ll need significantly more time and resources to build than with simpler solutions.
Best example: Tray.io
Tray.io is an AI-powered iPaaS solution with hundreds of pre-built connectors technical teams can use to set up their integrations. With its AI agents, you can build automated workflows that run complicated sequences of actions and deploy them in just a few days. For Jira Service Management, that means you can set up sequences that kick off whenever a new ticket is created that can dispatch it to the right expert and source the necessary context from as many tools as needed.
The impact of choosing the right integration
When you pick the right integration solution for teams that use Jira Service Management, you can measure the impact in the time and money you save. Here are a few examples of Unito customers that have streamlined their work using its Jira integration:
- Topl saves $1,100 and 12 hours a week integrating Jira with GitHub to improve the way their developers work with open-source projects.
- Passport Shipping, an international shipping carrier specializing in e-commerce, saves $1,400 and 17 hours a week by integrating Notion and Jira.
- Digistore24 saves $2,500 and 30 hours a week by syncing Jira with ClickUp and Slack to give everyone visibility on development projects.
- A leading CRM provider saves $17,600 and 223 hours a week syncing Jira with the rest of their tool stack.
- One of the biggest video game developers in the world saves $8,520 and 104 hours a week syncing Jira projects with Asana projects and Airtable records.