Most large and small enterprises work with JIRA as well as Airtable. Creating efficiencies between the two platforms with Airtable JIRA Integration helps organizations enhance collaboration among teams from diverse verticals. Airtable offers various ways of leveraging data, especially for teams that often work with JIRA Cloud. Teams can benefit from automation, apps, and syncing information directly into a table in their database.
Product and Engineering teams extensively use JIRA for tasks such as tracking tickets and transferring information to platforms like Airtable for allocating high-priority tasks. Teams can create Velocity Charts and Spin up Dashboards. Airtable JIRA Integration is extremely helpful for the teams that use both these tools.
JIRA allows you to automatically create, update, and organize your tasks. While Airtable will help you create new rows, search them, and update them. By integrating these two, you could do much more. This article aims at providing you with a step-by-step guide to help you with Airtable JIRA integration. On completion of this guide, you would be able to seamlessly set up Airtable JIRA Integration to keep your data synced.
Table of Contents
What is JIRA?
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The JIRA family of products helps teams manage their work efficiently. The JIRA Product Suite is purpose-built and deployed for various teams including but not limited to IT, Operations, Software, Business, and more.
The apps and products built on the JIRA platform enable Planning, Assigning, Tracking, Reporting, and Work Management. The platform improves collaborations among teams such as Agile Software Development and Customer Support; and across industries and organizations, whether it be a start-up or a large enterprise.
Key Features of JIRA
- Data Accessibility: Jira collects and organizes all of your company’s historical data. This website allows users to instantly access and acquire info whenever they need it. This tool enables users to conduct a range of statistical analyses, including trend analysis. It also makes it easier to create Constructive Reports on Operational Progress.
- Workflow Engagement: Jira also provides a 360-degree perspective of your processes, which is really beneficial. This ensures that everyone on the team is aware of the procedures and that none are overlooked. Team members can communicate, share ideas, attach essential documents, and receive regular updates on assignments and topics of interest to them.
- Agile Project Management: Scrum and Kanban techniques are offered on the platform, which is largely focused on Agile Project Management. It can also maintain track of regulatory proof throughout the development process. Jira Software includes estimation methods such as Hours, Storey Points, and others. This way, you can always be certain that you’re dealing with the most up-to-date information.
JIRA Product Guide
The products built upon the JIRA platform are:
- JIRA Software: It helps Agile teams to plan, track, and ship the best suitable software.
- JIRA Service Management: Provides your customer with a simple way to ask for support and a faster method for service teams to resolve customer issues.
- JIRA Work Management: Enables management of business projects that include approvals, HR onboardings, document reviews, Marketing Campaigns, etc.
- JIRA Align: Enterprise Agile Planning platform that connects Product, Program, and Portfolio strategy to technical execution at scale.
JIRA Software, JIRA Service Management, and JIRA Work Management integrate seamlessly for the teams to work together and achieve better results. They come with built-in project templates suitable for various use cases enabling smarter activities.
For further information on JIRA, you can check the official JIRA site here.
What is Airtable?
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Airtable houses the power of a Database and has the familiarity of a Spreadsheet. You can think of it as a Spreadsheet-Database Hybrid that has fields similar to cells in a Spreadsheet. The added advantage is that these fields also have types such as drop-down list, checkbox, phone number, etc. These fields can also reference file attachments just like images.
Key Features of Airtable
- Integrations: Airtable provides a powerful API and built-in support for a number of popular apps. Airtable integrates with Asana, Box, SMS, Salesforce, Zendesk, Google Drive, Basecamp, GitHub, Trello, and even social networking apps such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
- Simple yet Powerful Database Tool: Airtable is without a doubt one of the most user-friendly Database Management tools you’ll ever come across. You can stay on top of your game with an easy-to-use UI, No-code tools, Collaborative Workflow, a variety of templates to manage projects, and Automations.
- Airtable Apps Marketplace: Airtable Apps allow you to analyze, enrich, and act on your data. You may also remix Open-Source apps and customize them to meet your own Workflow with features and functionalities such as Gantt Charts, Pivot Tables, Time-tracker, Page designing app, URL Preview, and Jira Cloud.
What are the components of Airtable?
Some of the common actions performed in Airtable are creating databases, setting up column types, sorting, publishing views, collaborating, linking tables, adding records, etc. The six components of Airtable are:
- Bases: A Base holds all necessary information needed to create a project. Airtable has pre-existing templates to create a Base and you can also build one from scratch.
- Tables: An Airtable Table is similar to a Spreadsheet. A Base is a collection of tables.
- Views: The result set of data queries is presented in Views. These can be saved for future reference.
- Fields: Each entry in a table is a field and Airtable holds provision for 16 field types.
- Records: Each row of the Airtable table is known as a Record.
- Workspaces: A collection of Bases in Airtable is a Workspace.
Find more information on Airtable here.
Hevo Data, a No-code Data Pipeline helps to integrate data from Airtable and JIRA with various other free data sources and load it in a data warehouse of your choice to visualize it in your desired BI tool. Hevo is fully managed and completely automates the process of not only loading data from your desired source but also enriching the data and transforming it into an analysis-ready form without having to write a single line of code. Its fault-tolerant architecture ensures that the data is handled in a secure, consistent manner with zero data loss.
It provides a consistent & reliable solution to manage data in real-time and always have analysis-ready data in your desired destination. It allows you to focus on key business needs and perform insightful analysis using BI tools such as Tableau and many more.
Check out what makes Hevo amazing:
- Secure: Hevo has a fault-tolerant architecture that ensures that the data is handled in a secure, consistent manner with zero data loss.
- Schema Management: Hevo takes away the tedious task of schema management & automatically detects the schema of incoming data and maps it to the destination schema.
- Minimal Learning: Hevo with its simple and interactive UI, is extremely simple for new customers to work on and perform operations.
- Hevo Is Built To Scale: As the number of sources and the volume of your data grows, Hevo scales horizontally, handling millions of records per minute with very little latency.
- Incremental Data Load: Hevo allows the transfer of data that has been modified in real-time. This ensures efficient utilization of bandwidth on both ends.
- Live Support: The Hevo team is available round the clock to extend exceptional support to its customers through chat, email, and support calls.
- Live Monitoring: Hevo allows you to monitor the data flow and check where your data is at a particular point in time.
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Steps to Set up Airtable JIRA Integration
Here you’ll come across a step-by-step process that will help you set up Airtable JIRA Integration. You will be able to authenticate into Airtable and JIRA Server, send GET requests to retrieve issues from the JIRA Server Board, and create new records in the Airtable base.
Prerequisites
For successful Airtable JIRA integration, access and familiarity with the following tools is a prerequisite.
- Access to Airtable
- Access to Airtable API Key
- Access to JIRA Server
- Working knowledge of JavaScript
- Node.js (v.8.0.0 or later) (NPM will be installed as well)
There are just four steps you need to follow to set up Airtable JIRA integration:
Step 1: Identify What You Want to Sync
First, you need to identify an Airtable Base, a table, and the fields in that Base, where you would like to sync data. A unique identifier in the table will help differentiate each record in your table. Also, the Base Schema should be set up before you set up the Airtable JIRA integration.
All items from JIRA will have their unique identifiers. These identifiers need to be stored in your Base to reference the original JIRA item.
Step 2: Get Authentication Credentials
For Airtable
Generating an API key in Airtable will help you get authentication credentials for the same. Navigate your Airtable account page to find your API key. Here’s where you will find the option to generate an API key.
Account Overview Page → API Heading → Generate API Key
For JIRA Server
Authentication via API Token is the most common way to get authentication credentials for JIRA Server. You can easily create an API token from your Atlassian account.
- Log in to https://id.atlassian.com/manage/api-tokens.
- Click Create API token.
- A dialogue box will appear, enter a memorable and concise Label for your token and click Create.
- Click on Copy to clipboard, then paste the token to your script, or elsewhere to save.
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Step 3: Set up JIRA Server on a Local Machine
For Mac Operating System
The process to set up JIRA on your local machine running macOS, follow the simple process mentioned here:
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Find the detailed process to set up a JIRA server on a Mac machine, here.
For Windows Operating System
Here, we will install JIRA in the Production Environment with an external database and using a Windows installer. The steps are:
- Download JIRA installer for Windows Operating System
- Run the installer and follow the prompts to install JIRA
- Choose set up method
- Connect to your database
- Set application properties
- Enter your license
- Create an Admin Account and Set up Email Notifications
i. Download JIRA installer for Windows Operating System
ii. Run the installer and follow the prompts to install JIRA. You will be asked the following information:
Destination directory, home directory, TCP ports, and Install as service. Once installation is complete, JIRA will start up in your browser.
iii. Choose set up method: Choose the setup method to “I’ll set it up myself“.
iv. Connect to your database: Create a database if you have not already done so. Check the “Before you begin” section of the page for further details. Choose “My own database”, your database type, and enter the details of your database.
Check the detailed process for this step, here.
v. Set application properties: Give a name to your JIRA site and choose access rights for your site. Finally, enter your Base URL.
vi. Enter your license: Log in to my.atlassian.com to retrieve your license. You can also enter a license key.
vii. Create an Admin Account and Set up Email Notifications: By entering details of your mail server for getting notifications. Finally, start using JIRA
Step 4: Connect JIRA Server to Airtable
- Refer to the example repository on GitHub.
- Open your Terminal or Command Prompt → Reach the Directory where you saved the example repository.
- Install the corresponding NPM Modules by running npm -i.
- Set required environment variables:
- JIRA_ENDPOINT
- JIRA_AUTH
- JIRA_COOKIE
- AIRTABLE_APIKEY
- AIRTABLE_BASE_ID
- Here’s how you do it.
- Update the table and field names in index.js.
- Run “node index.js” in the terminal to fetch issues in a specific board in JIRA Server and create new records in the Airtable Base.
Conclusion
This article teaches you how to set up Airtable JIRA Integration with in-depth knowledge about the concepts and their implementation. Some of these steps and methods could be challenging for beginners and time and resource-consuming for experts as well. This is where Hevo comes into the picture to make your lives easier. Hevo Data, a No-code Data Pipeline helps you transfer data from a source of your choice in a fully automated and secure manner without having to write the code repeatedly. Hevo, with its strong integration with JIRA (a free source) along with various other sources, allows you to not only export & load data but also transform & enrich your data & make it analysis-ready in a jiffy.
Want to take Hevo for a spin? Sign up here for the 14-day free trial and experience the feature-rich Hevo suite first hand. Check out Hevo’s Pricing Plans here.
Tell us about your experience of setting up Airtable JIRA Integration! Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.