VIDEO: Integrate JIRA and Wrike like a Pro

Hello project managers! Today, I’m going to show you how you can easily manage complex projects across both Wrike and Jira. By the end of this video, you’ll know how to integrate Jira with Wrike, identify flow direction, create rules, and map fields. And depending on your experience with Wrike, you might already have Step 1 done. If you stick with me and follow this step-by-step guide, you’ll be able to efficiently run multiple workflows across both platforms, making project management stress-free.

The first thing you need to do? Turn on Wrike Sync. If you purchased the Wrike Sync add-on from Wrike, then it’s automatically enabled on your account. You don’t need to do anything else. Go ahead and skip to this time stamp in the video. If you haven’t done that, you can activate it manually by following these steps. Click your profile image in the upper-left corner of your workspace. Select Settings from the drop-down, then click Subscription in the left panel.

Scroll through the page until you find the Projects Syncs add-on. Click the Add to Trial button. Because I worked ahead, this screen will look slightly different… A pop-up will appear at the top of the window to show that the Wrike Sync trial is activated. Click Go to Settings on the pop-up. Or if you accidentally clicked out of it as I did, click your profile image now in the top-right corner, select Apps & Integrations, and click the Wrike Sync tab to open the settings.

If there are multiple Wrike accounts associated with your email, select the relevant one. Then click the Authorize Wrike button to provide the sync tool access to your Wrike account. Hit Accept when it appears. With Wrike Sync on, we can finally connect the 2 apps. In the Wrike Sync tab, click Start Here within the Connect Your Tools bar and choose the apps you want to connect. I’m picking Jira Cloud. Connect your account by pasting your account’s URL, and then select OAuth 2.0.

Review the access permissions, and then click Accept. Once done, hit Got It. After all of that, we finally make it back to the Connect Your Tools screen. Complete it by clicking on the drop-downs and selecting your account and your chosen project. For me, that’s “Integrate Jira with Wrike.” You might also see Wrike and Jira automatically populate the Types “Task” and “Issue.” Don’t worry about those right now. We’ll get to that later. Finally, hit Confirm.

Now that we’ve connected the apps, we need to determine what kind of flow we want. Your flow defines where tasks will be created and how each platform will communicate information. You can choose between a One-Way Sync or a Two-Way Sync. In a One-Way Sync, tasks created in one app will be transferred automatically to the second app, but tasks created in the second app will not appear in the first one. A Two-Way Sync allows for tasks to be shared between apps regardless of where they were initially built.

For this tutorial, I’m going to choose the One-Way Sync from Wrike to Jira. Once you choose your flow, hit Confirm. That’s all you need to do to technically connect Wrike and Jira, but if you want them to communicate effectively with each other, you’ll need to create some rules. Do this by filling in the criteria for your if/then workflow. You can add as many criteria as you like in both the If and Then sections. You can also add as many workflows as needed.

For my example, I’m just going to add the rules “Set default assignee to” myself and “Set default issue status to” “To Do.” So when a task is made in Wrike, those 2 defaults should appear in Jira when the task is reflected. When setting these rules, make sure the people creating the tasks in Wrike or Jira are aware of what criteria are needed to fulfill the rules. Even if one detail is missed, that info won’t be shared between the software. So be careful.

Once you’ve finished building a rule, hit Confirm. After that, a pop-up will appear asking you how you want to handle map fields. It’s time to circle back to when Wrike populated the type as “Tasks” while Jira used “Issues?” So the funny thing about Jira is that it uses IT jargon for its project management software. So a task in Wrike is an issue in Jira. But they are the same thing regardless. However, the backend programming doesn’t understand this.

That’s where mapping fields come in to help the software communicate with each other. Some fields are the same across both platforms like assignees, subtasks, comments, and more. If your rules include any of those, then select Map Automatically and let Unito handle it for you. But if your rules include specific jargon such as Importance vs Priority or Milestone vs Epic, then click Map Manually. If you do this, make sure you select the correct flow of information between the 2 platforms.

See how my manual flow setup is a bit wrong… Now hit Launch flow… And that’s it! Your Wrike and Jira accounts are integrated and able to communicate with each other easily. If you don’t currently have Wrike or Jira software but want to try them out, then head to the description to find links to each. Or if you found this video difficult to follow, we wrote down all these steps and posted them on project-management.com for your convenience. But before you go, don’t forget to hit the like and subscribe buttons while you’re here. It helps me know that you enjoyed the video. Good luck, and happy project managing.