Introducing Multi Jira Project Integrations, Custom Grouping, Bulk Syncing, and more.

Over the past six months, we have been working hard on improving our data model so it better reflects our customers’ needs and scales with them as their product teams grow.

A major part of that change was to shift most of our users to a single Workspace environment, the benefits of which are clear: using one Craft.io Workspace means everyone has a single product source of truth and a collaborative space to work together, manage dependencies and create product transparency. But, we had one thorny point! You could only connect a single Workspace to a single Jira project, which was not realistic for many of our customers. Well, that is no longer the case :)

As of today, you can integrate a single Workspace to any number of Jira projects. In addition, we made meaningful improvements to our Jira integration with a simplified integration process.

The first step is setting up the integrations. The integration flow is now simplified - just enter the credentials, name the integration, define the mapping, and you are done. You can also improve the integration by adding a webhook that will activate bi-directional syncing (i.e. in addition to syncing from Craft.io to Jira, when updating a Jira issue it will automatically update the correlating Craft.io item).

The biggest improvement is that now you can repeat this process and set up multiple integrations to your various Jira projects in the same Workspace. For example, assuming you are managing a product that works on several different platforms and the development of each platform is being managed in its own Jira project, you can now assign which Craft.io item syncs to which specific Jira project.

Once you have set up your integrations, when syncing a Craft.io item, you will be able to choose which Jira project you would like to integrate with. From that point, in order to update this item, you simply need to click “sync”. To avoid the mess associated with managing multiple Jira projects, each Craft.io item can be synced to a specific Jira project. You can always unsync a Craft.io item and resync it to a different Jira project.

In this release, we’ve also added the ability to bulk sync. From now on, you can multi-select items via the table or kanban views, and sync them all in a single click. Each item will be synced to its own Jira Project.

One of the main benefits of using Craft.io is the ability to build views that product, development, and other stakeholders like leadership, CS, Sales, and Support teams can rally around.

You can do so by using one of our powerful Table, Kanban, and Timeline boards to show your data in a way that is relevant to your audience. Today, we are supercharging these boards with Custom Grouping, the new power tool converting dev work into product clarity!

Custom grouping is simple but powerful - it allows you to add a selection type custom field to any data item you have in the system, and then group your view by that group. To understand why this tool is so effective, let's consider a real-life example:

Let's say you are the PM responsible for the product ZalesLoft, a highly successful sales engagement platform. Your company is working across different regions (NA, LATAM, APAC, EMEA) and you’re about to head into a regional leadership meeting where you need to outline each regional plan. Sounds familiar? Well, if in the past you had to dig through your Jira mess, export items to Google sheets, and organize the data in a neat presentation, you can now achieve the same result in a couple of clicks and create a compelling board to show your regional leadership! All thanks to Custom Groupings.

Craft.io enables users to add to Epics, Features, and Sub-Features a variety of custom field types, such as text, number, date, and selection from a list. These custom fields are very powerful as they enable users to define, differentiate, and filter the various items in the system. Today we have added a new type of custom field: Team members. In addition to the preset team member fields that already exist in the system, like “Created by” and “Assigned to”, users can now add team member custom fields, populated from the existing users and teams listed in a Craft.io Workspace. For example, users can now add a custom field named “PM” in order to define which items are managed by that PM, and this value can stay on the item level regardless of the current assignee of the task.

Jump into Craft.io and try out the new features for yourself, and don't forget to give us your feedback and thoughts in the official Craft.io Feedback Portal.