Dynamics 365 Jira integration | Step-by-Step Integration Guide

Brief introduction

Customer data is a powerful tool. In the right hands, it helps companies plan, strategize and execute successful growth and market expansion. That's the main reason behind the constantly growing number of CRM tools offered across marketplaces. Despite their many variations in features and capabilities, the goal is one  helping companies manage and maintain strong relationships with their customers.

Thanks to CRMs, companies benefit from centralized customer data and can easily automate repetitive customer-related operations. The result is improved decision making leading to a significant jump in conversion rates. Customer retention numbers also improve. The latter, however, also depends on the speed with which enterprises deal with their inquiries and problems. Therefore, CRM tools work in synchronization with DevOps systems.

An overview of Dynamics 365 and Jira

Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a powerful multi-module cloud solution. Comprised of different components intended to satisfy every need of mid-to large-scale businesses, Dynamics 365 (or D365) allows the seamless handling of Supply Chain Management, Customer service, Finance, Sales, and Business Central operations.

Jira Software, or simply Jira, is a top-of-mind DevOps solution. Extremely agile and scalable, Jira provides companies with a vast field for tracking the internal development progress of new products, features, and bug resolutions. IT teams use it to successfully build workflows, resolve issues and problems easily, and gain full transparency over crucial production rollouts.

Dynamics 365 top benefits

A comprehensive all-in-one solution like Microsoft Dynamics 365 offers a lot to its users:

• Easy to use and deploy. Microsoft Dynamics 365 users can effortlessly manage it  whether deployed in a cloud or hybrid cloud environment (based on their needs and scenario requirements).
• Seamless integration with a variety of systems. Connecting to tools such as Jira, ServiceNow, Salesforce, any Microsoft product, or others happens fast.
• Significantly shortens the sales cycles. Dynamics 365 helps accumulate large amounts of insightful customer data. That allows sales teams to get a better understanding of customer needs and craft a strategy that leads to conversions.
• Dynamics 365 is easily customized to fit the needs of any company department.
• Through its vast database, the customer service and sales departments gains access to crucial client details such as the first point of contact, interactions, buying behavior, and more. These help them tailor their moves in a way that increases the levels of customer satisfaction.
• Dynamics 365 allows for increased productivity and collaboration between teams.

Jira top benefits

• Jira is one of the most sought-after DevOps solutions for agile teams. The systems comprehensive features allow IT departments to easily monitor, investigate, track, and resolve any arising issues  in no time.
• The system helps companies achieve critical visibility over important issue resolution and product rollouts. DevOps teams can update one another and sync in real time on crucial activities such as when a task is started and when its completed.
• Jiras advanced features effectively increase the teams task prioritization capabilities, enabling them to successfully meet deadlines.
• Jira teams experience a drastic increase in their overall productivity, thanks to the fact that the system allows each team member to see which task is due and when it should be completed. That eliminates the possibility of misunderstandings and delays.

Without Dynamis 365 Jira integration in place    

The absence of a Dynamics 365 Jira integration serves as a precondition for data silos and delays in issues resolution. This is a direct result of the manual transfer of data to and fro, between the teams using the two systems. Inevitably, at some point, critical information may be duplicated or appear inconsistent and full of errors. The time spent on resolving customer-related problems begins to prolong, as the issues themselves pile up. Frustration and tension in and between the designated teams build up slowly and steadily. What's more, the end user is affected in a way that could irreversibly destroy its trust and connection with the business.

With a Dynamics 365 Jira integration in place

he presence of a Dynamics 365 Jira integration brings a lot of benefits. The most significant one is the seamless automatic data flow between the two. Repetitive and vital for the company's business development tasks and operations are not done manually. As a direct consequence of this, faulty data and bottlenecks are eradicated. Another positive of the Dynamics 365 Jira integration is that both teams can continue to work with the system of their choice, not worrying about the possibility of misunderstanding. Client problems are solved on time, leading to increases in CSATs and overall productivity. Leads and sales numbers skyrocket while client retention rates also boost.

Choosing the right integration solution  

Connecting Dynamics 365 and Jira is important. Deciding on the way the Dynamics 365 Jira integration is executed is even more important. There are plenty of tools on the market that promise to do the job. The right one, however, must fulfill not only the current needs and fit the use case scenario but also be scalable enough to catch up with any future requirements.

The perfect integration solution must provide agility, availability, and data security. Changes in either of the connected systems must be accessible by the stakeholders at any time. Simplicity and easiness of use are also derived features.

The ZigiOps no-code platform checks all the criteria. You can learn more about it on our ZigiOps product page.

Why choose the ZigiOps connector?

As a 100% no-code integration solution, ZigiOps does not require additional coding  making it the perfect tool for non-technical users. Extremely flexible and adaptable, the ZigiOps connector allows seamless, bi-directional connection between sophisticated systems like Jira and Dynamics 365. In a matter of minutes, the two systems are integrated, their data synchronized, and from then on  the two designated teams are kept up to date in real-time whenever a change in either of the systems occurs.

ZigiOps does not store any of the data transferred between Dynamics 365 and Jira, making it ideal for businesses that value a high level of security. Upon connecting Dynamics 365 and Jira, ZigiOps instantly automates tasks and operations. Transparency and constant availability are also among the connector characteristics.

Why opt for a Dynamics 365 Jira integration?  

The combination of CRM and DevOps systems is not an uncommon occurrence. On the contrary, by combining them in one technology stack, enterprises enhance their initial capabilities and range of operations. A Dynamics 365 Jira integration, preferably a bi-directional one, allows organizations to gain crucial insights and build successful strategies for business growth and customer retention. The communication between the two integrated systems (Dynamics 365 and Jira) ensures the company's stability in terms of communication with existing and prospective customers, as well as their retention.

The Dynamics 365 Jira integration is a prerequisite for the seamless streamlining of data between the development and customer service departments. Teamwork enhances, with data being accessible from stakeholders across the entire company. The time needed to resolve incoming customer problems and inquiries is cut, leading to high levels of end-user satisfaction. The overall communication and collaboration between the Jira and Dynamics 365 teams happen effortlessly on the spot, eliminating the possibility of misunderstandings or data leaks.

Unfortunately, the Dynamics 365 Jira integration is not the first choice of many companies. Quite often, the two systems co-exist in one tech stack without any connection between them whatsoever. That means that the collaboration between the teams can sometimes be blocked or slowed down. Data transfer is carried out manually, which takes up time and resources. Duplication and inconsistency become frequent occurrences.

Dynamics 365 Jira integration common use case

There is more than one use scenario that requires a Dynamics 365 Jira integration. But the most common is related to logging incidents as a task in Jira.

Lets assume that our company already uses both Jira and Dynamics 365. The Dynamics 365 team receives an alert about a new incident in the systems. To understand what's hiding behind it, the team must investigate it meticulously. It turns out that the issue requires the help of the DevOps team. For this to happen, the customer service team needs to log the incident into the Jira system. Without a working connection between it and Dynamics 365 system, the incident is transferred manually.

The lack of Dynamics 365 Jira integration in place makes the process of data transfer troublesome and time-consuming. Unintentional errors, misunderstandings, and information leaks occur.

With an agile integration solution like the ZigiOps connector, the Dynamics 365 Jira integration is instant. No additional coding or deployment of applications is needed. The ZigiOps platform seamlessly transfers the desired data alongside its details in seconds. As ZigiOps allows bi-directional system integration  the two systems (Dynamics 365 and Jira) are synchronized in real-time. If a change occurs in one of the connected systems, ZigiOps immediately detects and notifies the IT teams and the end users.

Setting up the Dynamics 365 Jira integration using the ZigiOps connector  

For detailed information check out our Dynamics 365 Jira integration page.

The first part of our bi-directional Dynamics 365 Jira integration is the initial installation of the ZigiOps platform. Like any other software solution, ZigiOps has standard requirements and installation processes. The tool is available in two versions: an iPaaS and on-premise.

The installation of the on-premises version takes less than five minutes to complete. ZigiOps does not require additional coding actions or changes in other applications to make the integration. Also, its essential to include that ZigiOps does not save any of the data that is transferred between the systems it connects. This makes it the perfect solution for companies that value high-security standards.

After logging into the system, you're taken immediately to the ZigiOps Dashboard.

It contains everything necessary related to the health status of the already executed integrations, existing licenses, exact number of transactions between systems, and more critical detailed information.

Unlike most of the integration solutions available on the market today, ZigiOps clean and intuitive design makes it easy even for the non-technical users to navigate without a fuss.

Connecting to Microsoft Dynamics 365

The first step of establishing the Dynamics 365 Jira integration is connecting to the systems. To connect to Microsoft Dynamics 365 we need the following data:

• The Microsoft Dynamics 365 Instance URL
• For the Authentication process, we need:
• Client ID
• Client Secret
• Tenant ID

Connecting to Jira

After establishing a connection with Dynamics 365 we have to connect to the second (destination) system. In our use case that would be the Atlassian Jira.

The steps are as follows:

• Instance URL
• User
• Password

You are also able to login through a proxy in case you want to. You need to have the following permissions for your Jira account:

• Add Comments
• Assign issues
• Browse Projects
• Create Attachments
• Create Issues
• Edit Issues
• Resolve Issues
• Transition issues

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Jira Integration Configuration

Once the desired systems are connected (Dynamics 365 and Jira), its time to execute the integration itself. This requires the configuration of the Dynamics 365 Jira integration.

ZigiOps allows its users to choose a ready-to-use template from its large library  to help save time and resources. Every template is fully customizable, enabling the resolution of more than one use case scenario. In case there is a more specific integration need  ZigiOps users have the chance to build their own integration template from scratch.

Integration configuration

Upon loading the Dynamics 365 integration template for incidents to tasks there are some additional settings to adjust before starting the process of connection. To finish the Dynamics 365 Jira integration preparations, we must go the ZigiOps drop-down menu:

• Point Dynamics 365 as a source system
• Set Jira as a destination system
• Define the entity type from Dynamics 365. In the particular use case scenario, this would be incident
• Point out the entity type from Jira task

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We can also define the exact action the ZigiOps connector should execute upon connecting both systems  Dynamics 365 and Jira.

After we're done with that, we can define the bi-directional updates ZigiOps. This happens by using the correlation section in the integration platform.

Once we are done with this, we can press the Save option and proceed to adjust the advanced data mapping of our ongoing Dynamics 365 Jira integration. When were finished with the Dynamics 365 Jira integration configuration, ZigiOps allows us to level-up the control over it.

ZigiOps Dynamics 365 Jira Integration Action Levels

That is possible through the tools action levels. We can have as many as we need. In our current use case scenario, the action levels will be limited to just 3  Create Task, Update Incident and Update Task.

Create Task Action

With ZigiOps, creating a Jira task happens fast and easy. This action allows us to tailor a trigger and trigger conditions. Additionally, we can also define our integrations expressions.

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ZigiOps UI: The Source tab in our Create Task action

ZigiOps Source tab displays the data we aim to collect and how it will be collected in our Dynamics 365 Jira integration. In the case of the Dynamics 365 Jira integration, its a task that we want ZigiOps to collect. Additionally, we can go deeper and specify which task  the newest one, the one assigned to a specific user, etc. ZigiOps provides filters and conditions in the Source tab for further control.

Field Mappings

Additionally, the ZigiOps integration tool has comprehensive mappings. The latter are crucial components of every successful process of data transfer between two systems. More specifically, in the case of our Dynamics 365 Jira integration with ZigiOps, the field mappings the information well send to the entity in the target system (Jira).

Expressions and trigger conditions are also present. They provide even more granular control over the Dynamics 365 Jira integration and the information transferred between the connected systems.

In the update incident field in our Dynamics 365 Jira integration, we can choose our trigger conditions, and expressions and define the interval at which the integration tool will look for new updates on both sides of the connected systems.

The update task section in the ZigiOps integration platform helps us define the time interval on which the tool will look for new updates on the Dynamics 365 incident.

Trigger conditions play a crucial role in a successful Dynamics 365 Jira integration. ZigiOps relies on polling as a trigger action to search for newly created incidents inside the Microsoft Dynamics 365 database. We can pick the time interval on which the ZigiOps platform will perform scanning of Dynamics 365  minutes, seconds, or days.

We have a trigger condition that consists of field name and value, which must be populated for ZigiOps to perform the scan.

We can additionally tailor the exact data that needs to be extracted from the source system and sent over the recipient system (system 2) Jira.

ZigiOps advanced field mapping functionality gives even more control over the information details the connector is able to fetch and transfer.

Now that we've looking inside how the Dynamics 365 Jira integration happens inside the ZigiOps system, lets peak at what happens inside the two connected systems  Jira and Microsoft Dynamics 365.

The first thing well do is to create a new incident in Dynamics 365.

Let's start by simply creating an incident in the Dynamics 365.

ZigiOps Dynamics 365 Jira integration: Incident creation in the Dynamics 365 system.

We have to fill in a couple of sections like title, customer, select the priority level of the incident. For further clarification on the incident, filling in the description field is necessary. This way, the DevOps team will get a better understanding of the problem and could choose the best way to handle it.

When the needed sections are filled, we can click Save.

After saving the incident details, ZigiOps immediately fetches its data and sends it directly to Jira.

We can tailor the integration so that ZigiOps will perform a bi-directional update on a predefined basis in case there is a change in the incidents status on either side.

Conclusion

Pairing CRM with DevOps allows enterprises to unite the efforts of their customer service and development teams in pursuit of better sales and customer retention performance. Having a stable connection between systems like Dynamics 365 and Jira Software ensures smooth communication between the designated teams and faster customer request remediation. If the integration is a bi-directional one, it even enhances the capabilities of the two systems. This way both parties continue to work together while at the same time, each of them uses the tool of their preference.

The ZigiOps connector establishes a seamless bi-directional connection between Dynamics 365 and Jira, opening the line for effortless and secure data transfer within minutes. The possibility of data silos and potential errors are eliminated. Workflows and critical business activities are automated, saving time and resources.