Zendesk Jira integration| Step-by-step guide with ZigiOps

In a client-centric business world, customer support and development go hand in hand for a good reason. That allows companies to fast and easily intercept any arising client-related problems, investigate them, and resolve them speedily. As a result, customers are happy, and their relationship with the business is strengthened. But to achieve this level of operational smoothness, companies seek to deploy comprehensive multi-tier solutions into their internal IT ecosystems. Systems like Zendesk and Jia are the most obvious choice.

Jira overview

Jira is a popular issue and project-tracking software developed by Atlassian. It is a widely used DevOps tool by IT teams to plan, track, and manage tasks and projects throughout their lifecycle. The Atlassian platform offers a flexible and customizable platform, empowering teams to adopt agile methodologies and workflows for efficient project management.

Zendesk Support Overview

Zendesk Support is a customer service software that helps businesses manage and resolve customer inquiries and support tickets. It provides a user-friendly interface for agents to handle customer issues through various channels like email, chat, phone, and social media. Zendesk Support streamlines ticket management automates processes and offers reporting and analytics tools to track performance and customer satisfaction.

Top Jira Benefits

Jira offers numerous benefits for teams and organizations. A diverse tool as the Atlassian Jira is referred by agile-oriented teams that aim to optimize their planning, tracking, and task management using popular methodologies like Scrum and Kanban.

With Jira, IT teams benefit from exceptional customization and collaboration on important tasks and projects. Real-time resolution and issue tracking make it possible to prioritize, and resolve bugs, tasks, and feature requests. Jiras visibility into project status and progress promotes transparency across the organization, enabling stakeholders to stay informed and engaged. One of the most cherished Jira features is its extensive marketplace.

Top Zendesk Benefits

Zendesk Support offers multichannel support, integrating various communication channels like email, chat, phone, social media, and self-service portals for customers to seek assistance. It provides a robust ticketing system for efficient management of inquiries and requests, along with a knowledge base that empowers customers to find answers independently, reducing the support workload.

The tool is highly customizable, allowing businesses to match the interface with their brand identity, and offers in-depth analytics for tracking performance metrics and customer satisfaction levels. With customizable ticket views and priorities, Zendesk ensures effective ticket prioritization, while its scalability caters to businesses of all sizes, from startups to large enterprises.

When there is no Zendesk Jira integration in place?

Even though Jira and Zendesk can be found working in the IT background of small to large-scale enterprises, in the majority of cases there is no connection between them. That means communication between the teams operating with them is more than probably not streamlined.

What are the drawbacks of the lack of Zendesk Jira integration:

The absence of such manual data entry, potential errors, and increased administrative burden for agents. It also results in inconsistent information, lack of visibility into customer issues, and siloed workflows, hindering collaboration and efficiency between support and development teams. This situation often results in reduced productivity, difficulty in tracking customer history, limited reporting, and a negative impact on the overall customer experience and satisfaction.

Zendesk Jira integration benefits for enterprise users:

• Enhanced Collaboration: With a Zendesk Jira integration in place, support and development teams can work together more effectively, sharing information, and resolving issues faster, leading to improved cross-functional collaboration.

• Unified View of Customer Issues: The Zendesk Jira integration provides a unified view of customer issues and related development tasks, helping support agents and developers stay on the same page and work towards timely resolutions.

• Improved Issue Resolution: When there is a Zendesk Jira integration Support streamlines the communication between support and development teams, facilitating faster and more accurate issue resolution for customers.

• Comprehensive Reporting and Analytics: Combined data from Jira and Zendesk Support allows for more comprehensive reporting and analytics, enabling data-driven decision-making and performance evaluation.

• Reduced Data Duplication: The Zendesk Jira integration Support helps reduce the need for duplicate data entry, preventing errors and saving time for support agents who no longer have to manually enter information in both systems.

• Enhanced Customer Experience & Consistent Customer Communication: The presence of a Zendesk Jira integration Support allows smoother and more efficient support process and communication, leading to improved customer experience and higher customer satisfaction.

How to pick the right tool for a seamless Zendesk Jira integration?

Deciding on an integration solution is not an easy task. It takes a lot of research on the available options diving deep into each of their functionalities, their easiness of use, and abilities to withstand problems and allow the company to scale its goals.

However, there are few turn points that play critical role when picking the most suitable solution for the Zendesk Jira integration:

• Integration Capabilities: It should support bi-directional data synchronization and allow for easy data mapping and customization.

• User-Friendly Interface: An intuitive and user-friendly interface is a must. A tool that offers a simple configuration process and easy setup will save time and effort during implementation.

• Pre-built Templates: These can significantly expedite the integration process and ensure compatibility between the systems.

• Data Security and Compliance: Security is critical when integrating two systems that handle sensitive customer data.

• Automation and Workflows: It's important whether the tool used for the Zendesk Jira integration supports automation and allows to setting up of custom workflows for seamless issue tracking and resolution.

• Support and Documentation: Comprehensive documentation and reliable customer support are necessary. This will be crucial during the implementation process and for resolving any issues that may arise later.

• Scalability and Performance: Assess the integration tools scalability to handle the organizations current and future needs is something very important. It should be capable of supporting a growing volume of data and users without compromising performance.

• Integration Testing: If possible, conduct a proof of concept (POC) or integration testing with the tool to ensure it works as expected and meets the specific use cases.

A comprehensive and advanced system integration tool like ZigiOps checks in all the boxes.

Why choose ZigiOps for a successful Zendesk Jira integration?

Companies often struggle to choose between external and internal integration solutions, with some favoring the latter despite its time-consuming nature and potential shortcomings. TThe Zendesk Jira integration can be challenging, leading to data gaps and delays in remediation processes, resulting in customer dissatisfaction.

An advanced, out-of-the-box solution like ZigiOps can be a game-changer. ZigiOps is an agile and scalable no-code integration platform that offers a secure bi-directional integration between Jira and Zendesk Support. It provides an intuitive UI and pre-defined templates, allowing users to set up integrations quickly and efficiently. No time and resources are wasted.

ZigiOps covers every aspect of the Zendesk Jira integration, offering a customizable and flexible approach without the need for additional applications or developer assistance. With ZigiOps, the Zendesk Jira integration can be accomplished in minutes, ensuring a stable, functional, and reliable system integration.

What's also important to mention is that ZigiOps does not store any of the data transferred between the connected systems (Jira and Zendesk in this case). Learn more about ZigiOps and its capabilities in this article.

How to Connect Jira and Zendesk Support?

Zendesk Jira integration use case  in brief

The most common reason for the Zendesk Jira integration is to transfer:

• Zendesk Tickets as Jira Issues

Let's imagine the following scenario. An enterprise has both Jira and Zendesk Support embedded into its IT infrastructure. One of the teams, the helpdesk one, has just received a notification about a newly created incident in their Zendesk Support queue. They must investigate its root cause and determine where the problem results from. Upon thorough search, the conclusion is that it is a software bug. To handle it timely, the DevOps team (on Jira's side) needs to look at it.

When the Zendesk Jira integration is done via ZigiOps, the helps desk doesn't need to open Jira and manually create a ticket for the bug. The integration platform creates it automatically and updates it every minute (or at an interval that suits the case), which guarantees a smooth application lifecycle management (ALM).

The back-and-forth communication and collaboration between the helpdesk team and the developer working on the bug happens quickly and easily. No need for additional plugins or systems, in order for our Zendesk Jira integration to work seamlessly. Log files, traces, issue links, and all other attachments are easily synced in real time. Also, streamlining defect tracking and resolution, and enhancing change request management happens without a fuss.

Once the Jira DevOps team resolves the issue, ZigiOps updates the Zendesk incident instantly. Since ZigiOps established a bi-directional Zendesk Jira integration, any changes on the issues appear instantly in real-time so that both Jira and Zendesk teams know are kept informed simultaneously

Zendesk Jira integration via ZigiOps  set up process

The first step of the Zendesk Jira integration Support is installing the ZigiOps system. ZigiOps comes with a full documentation on its requirements and installation processes for further clarification. Available on iPaaS and on-premises, ZigiOps takes a few clicks to install and start running. The installation of the on-premises version of ZigiOps needs not more than five minutes to complete. Since it's a no-code solution, using ZigiOps does not require additional coding actions. Also, it does not require changes in other applications to make the integration. Due to its strict security policies, ZigiOps does not store any of your information.

Logging into ZigiOps is fast and easy. The integration platform requires just a password and username.

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Once inside, ZigiOps takes users directly to the main Dashboard. It showcases the number of system integrations active, licenses, and the status of the connected systems (if there are such).

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ZigiOps Integrations Templates Gallery

One of the most notable ZigiOps features is the presence of a library with a long list of pre-built integration templates. There is also the option of importing a custom integration template for those use cases that require specific attention.

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Thanks to ZigiOps enhanced capabilities, users can filter the library in search of the pre-built template they'd like to load and use for their Zendesk Jira integration. This is possible by either writing the name of one of the desired systems in the Search bar or by using the filter by system pair option. System A and System B in the current use case would be Jira and Zendesk. As a result, the ZigiOps platform will instantly show the available template for the Jira integration with Zendesk.

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After that, we only must click on the load template and ZigiOps instantly loads the template with which the work on the Zendesk Jira integration may begin.

As seen in the integration template above, ZigiOps users need to define System 1 and System 2 for their integrations. System 1 represents the system that the data is extracted from, and System 2  is the recipient of the data. In the current Zendesk Jira integration scenario, System A is Zendesk (Zendesk Support). To initiate the integration between systems 1 and 2, users have to first connect them to the ZigiOps platform.

Connecting to Zendesk Support instance

Establishing a working connection between ZigiOs and Zendesk happens fast and without any fuss. It takes just a few clicks and requires the following data:

• Server URL  Input the URL of your instance. For example, https://example.zendesk.com.
• Authentication Type  These are the supported authentication types.

• Basic Auth  The platform will use the provided username and password for authentication.
• Bearer Token  The platform will use the provided username and client application ID for authentication.
• OAuth  The platform will use the provided username, password, client application ID, and client secret for authentication.

• Proxy Settings  Enables the usage of a proxy server if necessary.

Connecting to the Jira instance

Next comes Jira. Just like Zendesk, users have to allow ZigiOps to connect with their Jira instance first, before proceeding with the actual integration.

The needed data is as follows:

• Instance URL
• User
• Password

You are also able to log in through a proxy if you want to.

Zendesk Jira integration: Zendesk tickets to Jira tasks configuration

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The next step of the Zendesk Jira integration takes us to the template itself. There, after filling in the two systems wed like to connect (Jira and Zendesk), we can define the entities wed like to transfer. ZigiOps downloads the schema and loads all available entities in our Zendesk to choose from.

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The same is valid for Jira as well. The list of entities available depends on the particular Jira instance.

Continuing on with our Zendesk Jira integration. After defining the entities and the correlation logic ZigiOps will use to establish the connection between the systems, we can click SAVE and proceed.

Zendesk Jira integration: Action Items available

ZigiOps provides the users with unlimited actions that can be set according to the use case. In our case, they are:

• Create task
• Update task
• Update ticket (back sync)

Creating a task in Jira happens quickly and easily. ZigiOps allows yto set a trigger, and trigger conditions, as well as to define the expressions (you can learn more about expressions in ZigiOps from the following article). These functionalities allow us to set all the proper conditions needed. The expressions are used to create additional variables by modifying data extracted from the source system. They enable us to achieve tasks that the source system itself does not offer.

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Furthermore, the ZigiOps platform comes with comprehensive mappings. The Field Mapping defines what do we want to send to the entity in the target system. Which fields in the target do we want to create or update, and what values do we want to populate or assign to them. These values usually come from the source system.

(To learn more about field mapping and its capabilities, check out our article on the topic.)

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Update Jira Task Action

Thanks to ZigiOp's bi-directional integration capabilities, updating the task in the Jira instance in real-time happens automatically.

Updating the Jira task section allows us to outline the time interval on which the tool will look for new updates.

We have a trigger condition that consists of field name and value, which can be set in specific ways so that we can control when data is actually transferred.

The field mapping option gives granular control over how the information is being transferred to the destination system. Depending on the situation, we can tailor the type of data to match the type of action with the value.

Update ticket (Backsync)

The last but not least vital part of the Zendesk Jira integration via ZigiOps is the update ticket backsync.

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In our current use case, the initial data transfer starts from Zendesk (System 1) and leads towards Jira (the recipient or System 2). Any update on the Jira task comes back to Zendesk as a back sync, thus helping the two teams that operate with the systems aligned in real-time. Again, ZigiOps allows to customize the fields and the data

Conclusion

Jira and Zendesk are two widely popular tools used in the realm of project management and customer support, respectively. Jira is renowned for its robust issue tracking and agile project management capabilities, making it the preferred choice for software development teams to efficiently manage tasks and collaborate effectively.

On the other hand, Zendesk excels in providing top-notch customer support solutions, streamlining ticket management, and facilitating seamless interactions with customers. These tools are often integrated because their combined functionality allows organizations to bridge the gap between development and customer service, enabling a smoother workflow and improved communication throughout the product development and customer support lifecycle. Integration ensures that customer issues reported in Zendesk can be seamlessly transferred as tasks to Jira, promoting a unified approach to problem-solving. Additionally, data synchronization between the two systems helps maintain consistency and enhances overall productivity.

With the ZigiOps platform as a solution to the Zendesk Jira migration, both systems work in synchronization, workflows are optimized and customer satisfaction levels are enhanced.

Try the ZigiOps capabilities for Jira integration with Zendesk. Book a demo today.