Hansoft JIRA integration

Sharing JIRA filters for integration use

When configuring the JIRA integration in your Hansoft projects you can specify a JIRA user for the integration to use. One of the things this user is used for is listing filters for deciding which issues should be synced from the JIRA side. Even though different Hansoft projects can sync to different JIRA servers, the integration is limited to one user per JIRA server it is syncing too. Instead of having this user creating the filters needed for the syncing, you can simply share filters to the user instead. This way you can easily make existing filters available to the integration.

Hansoft JIRA integration columns and matchings

JIRA columns created in Hansoft by the integration are appended with (JIRA) to be easily distinguishable. Similarly all Hansoft columns created in JIRA are appended with [Hansoft]. Project specific Hansoft columns will in addition to the Hansoft tag have their project name in square brackets as well.

Summary fields for numeric columns

In order for the integration to properly work with summaries, all numerical Hansoft columns will generate two additional fields in JIRA: Stat and Summary. These columns should not be deleted or updated manually. The option to enable the Summary and Stat columns are set up per integration in the sync settings dialogue.

URL columns

The integration makes URL columns available on both the JIRA and Hansoft side to make it easy to jump between items in the two systems. In Hansoft this column is called “JIRA URL (section name)” and the corresponding column in JIRA is called “Item URL [Hansoft, Project name]”.

URL in Hansoft:

URL in JIRA:

Note: In order for the Hansoft URL:s to be properly generated the server hostname must be specified. This option is found in the Administration tab in Hansoft.

JIRA attachments default column

When the integration is running a column will be available in Hansoft by default which contains links to the attachments of a synced item. This column is called “Attachments (JIRA, Hansoft section)”. These links can be used to quickly jump to attachments stored on the JIRA side.

In addition to this column the integration has a functionality to easily download all attachments of a synced item for storage on the Hansoft side.

Specific column matching

As described above all system specific columns will be created and available for use in the two systems. There are a couple of core columns that are directly matched between the two systems however and they are described in more detail below. The two columns associated with assignment and work remaining have some logic associated with them whereas the other four columns are simply matched.

1.Hansoft “Assigned to” – JIRA “Assignee”

For single user assignments the two columns are simply synced between the two systems.

Hansoft supports multiple assignees whereas JIRA does not. In order to support this the “Assigned to [Hansoft]” column in JIRA is used. The “Assigned to [Hansoft]” column in JIRA contains a list of all the assigned users from Hansoft. The first user in that list will be set as “Assignee” in JIRA. Using the “assign to” functionality in JIRA will update “Assignee” and add a single user in the “Assigned to [Hansoft]” list, clearing the other assignees in the list. If you wish to use multi assignment from JIRA you must use the “Assigned to [Hansoft]” field to assign users.
2.Hansoft “Work remaining” – JIRA “Logged work”, “Estimated”, “Remaining”

Estimation works differently in Hansoft and JIRA. In Hansoft “Estimated ideal days” or “Points” are used in the Product Backlog to estimate User Stories. These are then committed to Sprints where the teams break them down and give them estimates on “Work remaining”. Since there is no 1-1 connection on how this works in the two systems it is setup as below.

If “Estimated” is not set in JIRA and an item with “Work remaining” is synced from Hansoft, both “Estimated” and “Remaining” will be set to the “Work remaining” value. Following updates to “Work remaining” in Hansoft will not change “Estimated” but will only update “Remaining”.

“Logged work” does not have a corresponding column in Hansoft and is not synced.

Tip: In JIRA you have the option to set the format of the “Remaining” field. Since Hansoft uses hours as base value for “Work remaining” it is recommended that you set hours in JIRA as well to avoid confusion. This option is found under “Issue Features” in the “System” tab of JIRA.
3.Hansoft “Item name” – JIRA “Summary”

Simple match.

4.Hansoft “Comments” – JIRA “Comment”

Simple Match

5.Hansoft “Originally created by” – JIRA “Reporter”

Simple match

6.Hansoft “User story / Detailed description” – JIRA “Description”

Simple match

7.Hansoft Finish – JIRA Due date

Item type, status and workflow differences

Items and tasks in JIRA and Hansoft differ in regards to type, workflow and statuses. All item types in JIRA are associated with a workflow and their item status is derived from that workflow. Items in Hansoft are defined by the section from which they originate.

Items in Hansoft from the product backlog are neutral in the sense that they only exist in the product backlog and can be typed as “user stories”. Items in the Product Backlog can be committed to the project schedule where they can be task scheduling items and be planned out gantt style, or they can be committed to sprints and be estimated as agile items. Theses items do not have a workflow attached by default in Hansoft.

Hansoft sections vs JIRA screens

Hansoft projects contains three main views where tasks and items are located; the product backlog, the project schedule and the QA section (see screenshots at the bottom of this page).

The section that mostly resembles JIRA is the QA section which is a flat structure of items (bugs). Items in the QA section always have an assigned workflow which makes this section easy to map towards JIRA.

The product backlog and project schedule within Hansoft are hierarchy based and supports a virtually unlimited tree depth. JIRA items are organized in a flat structure with sub-tasks supplying a hierarchy of depth one.

Because of this difference in data structure, a thorough mapping of the two systems is needed when creating the JIRA filters and Hansoft reports used for syncing items. This is described more in detail in the Detailed installation instruction section of the manual.

JIRA and Hansoft projects

In a typical agile project we have our product backlog for planning and estimating tasks, the project schedule where we work on tasks and a QA section where we handle bugs and issues during development. In JIRA these items are of different types but stored in a flat structure. When integrating with Hansoft we most likely want the different item types to be synced to the different sections of Hansoft (see the above section).

You need to setup the integration for each Hansoft project section that you want to sync items to. In each section you create a report to filter out the items you wish to sync (picture 2). If you are syncing three different JIRA item types to different sections in Hansoft you need to create three JIRA filters, one for each item type.

•  JIRA filters syncing different item types to different sections in Hansoft
•  one report per section is used in Hansoft to specify which items that should be synced to JIRA

Picture 3: in this setup we sync two Hansoft sections to one project in JIRA and another Hansoft section to a second JIRA project

Hansoft sections

Project schedule view

Product backlog