Getting Confluence and Jira talking to each other brings many benefits to business leaders, not just developers

Atlassian’s popular enterprise collaboration applications Confluence and Jira are known for facilitating teamwork when used individually, but they can also work well together for even greater productivity. In this blog we’ll take a look at some business benefits of integrating Confluence and Jira.

1. Scheduling and tracking. Keep teams informed of what’s happening in Jira by connecting a calendar of people, tasks and events to the Confluence workspace. This removes any disconnect between software development teams and those writing documentation, for example. This also helps team planning for product releases and other large projects.
   
   
2. Consolidated user management. It’s possible to put Jira in charge of user management for both Jira and Confluence. This streamlines the process of adding staff to either application and puts you in control of which Jira teams have access to Confluence. Consolidated user management also makes denying access to easier thus limiting security concerns associated with unused accounts.
   
   
3. Clearer project scope and requirements. Business folk working on product requirements, sales programs and strategic planning can turn these ideas into actionable items by creating Jira issues from within Confluence. And as I’ve blogged about before, the business is far more productive and efficient if a modern work management application is used to track tasks instead of email.
   
   
4. Reports in business speak. Jira is continuously generating a wealth of information about projects and issues, but the business teams are unlikely to have the time or skills to delve in the details. This is where linking Jira data to Confluence reports comes in handy. Status reports can be presented in easy-to-read charts and they can be created from a simple user interface – no coding required.
   
   
5. Documentation for quality development. Your product development and process capability will improve immensely when the team members performing the work have access to the right documentation from within Jira. Bring Confluence pages to the Jira workspace by adding “gadgets” and allow developers and support staff to easily view documentation relevant to the tasks they are working on. Trusted connections can be established for access to user-restricted Confluence pages.

With a strong cross over between Jira and Confluence in many organizations, we can expect to see more options for connecting the two applications with each new release.

Integration, not just for developers

At ServiceRocket we have developed many add-ons for Jira and Confluence that enhance existing features and integrate individual services. I encourage IT and business leaders to look at the possibilities of connecting different applications together. The term “integration” has a strong developer flavor associated with it, but the business benefits are often easy to see.

Talk to your business and technical teams about what they would like to see work together better. If it’s running on a modern platform like Atlassian’s tools or a cloud service the chances are the integration work is worth the process improvement. And in the case of product development, integration can go a long way to improving project outcomes.

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