6 Tips for Creating a Jira and Asana Integration (+ Guide)
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This post was updated on September 25, 2024, with new information about how users can connect Jira and Asana using Visor.
If you’re anywhere near the tech world, you’ve probably heard of Jira and Asana.
Both are project management applications that are widely used and which are often used together. So if you’re looking to connect Asana and Jira via an integration (or just trying to decide between the two), you’re in the right place. In this post, we’re going to break down:
- The differences between Asana and Jira
- How to connect the applications using an Jira Asana integration
- How to connect Jira and Asana using Visor
We’re experts on this. We’re Visor, an app that helps PMs get their data in one clear, informative place – even if their people aren’t! We integrate with apps like Jira, Asana, and Salesforce to help create crystal-clear team alignment. Build Kanban boards, Gantt charts, and Dashboards for free and find out why we’re the stellar PM’s secret weapon.
The Best Way to Integrate Jira and Asana
If you’re here because you want to integrate Jira and Asana, we’ll cut to the chase: yes, there is an integration between the two, however it may not be the best choice for you and your team.
Jira and Asana have a default integration, but it’s a bit limited in what it can offer you. For instance, there are things that one app has (like sprint set ups in Jira) that won’t be reflected back and forth.
You’ll also be obligated to pick which app is more of your project management “home” – when two apps are integrated, one will need to be the source of truth while the other is “demoted” to an auxiliary. This can pose problems for PMs working with two or more fully-developed teams who use multiple different tools, as you’ll end up favoring one over the other when you pull data and look at overview information.
That said, concrete items like tickets do have a two-way sync, so if you only need very basic functionality, you might be ok.
For most teams, however, you’ll want more complex and detailed integrations. You’ll also be needing a centralized place to see all the data at once, not just filtered through just a Jira or just an Asana lens.
The best solution for this case is Visor – which integrates with both Asana and Jira using bi-directional syncing, which helps you keep all three apps in order while having a single source of truth.
Visor’s Integrations Panel
Visor is a project management app that stands on its own while being highly complementary to both Jira and Asana.
Think of it like an extension of both tools – it fills in missing functionality while adding new options and creating flexibility for PMs trying to integrate Asana and Jira.
Integration is extremely easy – simply select which apps you use, and with the click of a button you’ll have your information fully synced with Visor.
Visor’s Gantt View
When all of your data is in one place, you’ll be better able to manage it, along with your teams. You won’t have to go hunting for missing information or wondering about project status, because having a core application will allow you to smoothly synthesize all your data.
Best of all, now that all the info is in one place, you’re empowered to visualize it in a variety of powerful ways. Visor has multiple views to give you exactly what you need to manage your project, including Gantt charts, Kanban boards, Timelines with Milestones, and more.
Visor’s Board View
With all that information in one place, you can rely on your Dashboard View to help you make sense of all this information at a glance.
Visor’s Dashboard View
Best off all, Visor integrates with apps like Jira, Asana, and Salesforce as a default feature, making these integrations totally free. So you have nothing to lose!
Visor is truly the most useful tool to sync Jira and Asana, as it not only fills the need, but offers a wide range of additional features and benefits.
If you’re still confident that the default integration is actually the best choice for you, never fear: we break down exactly how to set it up below.
Which is better – Jira or Asana?
Deciding which application to use comes down to what you’d like to use it for. There are some instances where Jira’s the right tool and others where you’d be better off using Asana.
Jira Overview
Jira is often used for technical projects like software development, bug tracking, or engineering project management. Founded in April 2002 in Sydney, Australia, by parent company Atlassian, the product was instantly successful and has become one of the most popular project management tools for organizations that use Agile methodologies, according to the 16th Annual State of Agile report.
When to use Jira
Jira might be the right choice for you if:
- You need a solution for your DevOps or engineering team. Though it can (and is!) used by many other team types, Jira has specific features that are designed for those use cases.
- Your focus is issue tracking. It’s even in the name – you don’t create tasks in Jira, you create Issues
- You need more advanced features. Jira offers features like scrum boards as well as offering dependencies and task estimates.
Popular Jira Features
Jira offers many helpful features that make it a favorite for project managers, including:
- Scrum or Kanban views: Having two different views allows you to set up your project in the way that works best for your team and its workflow.
- Rules and automation: Creating rules and automation takes some of the manual work of Jira, like assigning to another team member or transitioning statuses, off of the people so you can spend more time executing the things that matter.
- Custom fields and statuses: One size does NOT fit all and Jira knows that, too! With the ability to create custom fields to track data or statuses unique to your organization, Jira allows you to customize and track your project in a way that gets you the information you care about.
Asana Overview
Asana is used for more general project management by teams like Marketing, Customer Success, or Product. Founded in 2008 in San Francisco, California, the product launched in April 2012. Asana’s flexible platform allows users to create workflows that work best for their needs.
When to use Asana
You might consider Asana if:
- You have more general project management needs. Asana has fewer engineering-specific tools, but its more general build means that you can use it for other teams, like Marketing or Design.
- You want better in-app collaboration. Asana offers a built-in chat feature and lets you instantly start a chat or create a one-on-one project by hovering over a user’s name, letting you use Asana for communication rather than email.
- You want the team onboarded quickly. Asana is generally a bit easier to learn and easier to set up fast. If you have a small team that you’d like to quickly move into a project management application, then Asana is a good choice.
Popular Asana features
Asana allows users to create easy, customizable workflows, thanks to features like:
- Different views: Much like Jira, Asana offers multiple view options, including List and Kanban, so that users can organize and view information in the way that works best for them and their team.
- Subtasks: Sometimes, you need to break down the work. By allowing users to create subtasks, Asana encourages accountability and time management by taking bigger tasks and allowing them to be completed in bite-sized pieces.
- Assignees and filters: Asana allows you to assign tasks and subtasks to teammates and enables users to filter by a teammate in the main view of a project. This set of features makes allocating work and tracking who is working on which tasks easy to follow.
Does Asana have a Jira integration?
Yes, Asana does have a Jira integration, which you can install from Asana’s Jira Cloud page. The integration offers a two-way sync between Asana and Jira so that you can automatically update a task from one application in the other. You can also create Jira tickets from within Asana.
As we said above, there are also other ways to connect your Asana and Jira data – for instance, you can connect both tools using Visor. Rather than a simple integration, you get a central source of truth for all your project management data, which allows you to see how projects across multiple teams are running.
Try Visor for free to help share your data with everyone on your team.
6 Tips for a Jira & Asana Integration
Integrating Jira and Asana allows teams to achieve many different tasks without having to master two separate platforms. Here are some benefits and need-to-know tips for best leveraging an integration between Jira and Asana.
1. Improve communication between teams
Integrating two powerful applications like Jira and Asana allows for collaboration between the two products and sharing of data that might otherwise be separate or siloed. But to facilitate this improved collaboration, you must integrate the two platforms thoughtfully. (More on how to do that in the next section.)
When setting up your platform, you’ll want to avoid configurations that complicate your workflow by sending over duplicate data or forcing redundant communication between teams about what task is in which status, what needs to be done, what needs to happen next, etc. Properly integrating the two applications allows you to get the information you need (and nothing more) without needing direct access to both platforms.
2. Stay in the “world” you love most
Your Jira and Asana integration should allow you to stay in the platform that you’re the most comfortable with. For instance, using Asana’s app-integration capability to integrate with Jira allows users in Jira to see which tasks in Asana coincide with Jira work. Users in Asana can also create tasks in Jira while still in Asana. This streamlined workflow allows for easy visibility between teams while staying in the apps they feel most comfortable with and protecting their project ecosystems while allowing collaboration.
If you have users that need data from Jira and Asana, you may need an alternate solution. Visor allows you to share data from both apps with unlimited viewers, so stakeholders that aren’t using Jira or Asana can still get the info they need.
3. Make sure the fields you need will sync properly
Many fields sync from Asana to Jira, but there are also a number that aren’t supported. It’s important to note that other fields only sync from Jira to Asana. Before integrating, you’ll want to ensure the fields you need will sync. If not, you may want to consider a more comprehensive solution, like Visor, for syncing Asana and Jira data all in one place. You will also need to ensure that users have permission in Jira and Asana to create new issues and work with the fields most beneficial to your teams. If you can’t give teams access to both, you may run into issues and may want an alternative to the Asana Jira integration.
4. Understand your team’s workflow
A Jira and Asana integration might not be the best solution for every organization. Even though the two applications remain separate, allowing for the transfer of information between the two can lead to confusion for certain projects.
While each platform guides how to get the most out of the integration, like Asana’s reference chart that outlines how a field in that platform shows up in Jira, the value of the integration should still be a discussion that happens with thought to the goals and outcomes of the project.
Once again, Visor offers a simple alternative – you can connect both Asana and Jira with Visor so that you can see both sets of data without replicating tickets in systems where the mapping and hierarchies may not be exactly the same.
5. Translating between two apps might be more trouble than it’s worth
Each application has its own jargon and status structure, so marrying the two worlds might require more mapping and translation than project leaders are willing to do. For example, a Jira Sprint can be exported to Asana, but a Sprint cannot be created in Asana and pushed back to Jira. Sometimes, this one-way communication might create more trouble than it’s worth.
Visor gives you an out here, allowing you to map whatever data you need without the headache of the integration’s limited functionality.
6. Think about which platform works best for each team
At Visor, we use both Jira and Asana, so we’re no strangers to the incredible capabilities of both platforms. Our organization uses Asana to track one-on-one meetings, individual tasks, and design projects. We also use Jira to track our engineering tasks and projects because of Jira’s ability to integrate well with GitHub (we’ll save that integration for another day).
Since our Product and Design teams work in Asana, we’ll often link the Asana tasks to the corresponding engineering tickets in Jira. Linking tasks allows the Engineering team to see where Design and Product work is in the process so they have a good idea of what’s coming down the pipeline and when a project will be ready for coding.
Step-by-Step Guide for Setting Up a Jira & Asana Integration
Step 1: To integrate the Jira Cloud app with Asana, you need a Jira Cloud account and edit access to the Jira project you are working with.
Step 2: In Asana, navigate to the “Customize” button in the top-right corner of your Asana project screen.
Step 3: From there, navigate to Apps and click “Add App”. Select Jira Cloud and then click “Add to project”. You can then authorize your Jira account. Asana users can open an Asana task, create a Jira issue from Asana, or link to an existing Jira issue.
Step 4: To sync data from the Jira Cloud to Asana, you can decide whether you want to update information from Asana to Jira, from Jira to Asana, or on a project level only. Inside Asana, you will see an option to choose your integration preferences.
Step 5: To sync data from the Jira Cloud to Asana, you can decide whether you want to update information from Asana to Jira, from Jira to Asana, or on a project level only. Inside Asana, you will see an option to choose your integration preferences.
One More Way to Connect Teams With Integrations
Integrating Jira and Asana directly isn’t the only way to connect teams with different priorities and workflows in your organization.
Some tools, like Visor, offer a bi-directional Asana and Jira integrations that can pull in information from your favorite project management software and push data back out.
Since the integrations with Visor are bidirectional, you can draft Asana tasks or Jira issues, add custom fields that only live in Visor and don’t sync to your project management software, use Asana and Jira data to create visual datasets like resource allocation graphs or Gantt charts, or color-code by key fields such as assignee or status.
Unlike most project management systems, Visor requires minimal training or onboarding since the application features an easy-to-use spreadsheet, making it accessible to all team members regardless of technical ability.
If you need extra support, Visor’s Customer Success team will happily book a quick 30-minute chat or training session. You can reach us via chat in the Visor app.
