Synchronizing an Existing Forecast Project with Jira and Changing Jira Prefix Settings

Forecast's Jira integration gives you the ability to seamlessly sync projects and their components between the two platforms.

If you are looking for how to initially set up your integration and sync your very first project between Jira and Forecast, see the Jira Cloud article.

Time to read: 5 minutes

Main takeaways:

• Synchronize an existing Forecast Project with Jira in a few simple steps
• Projects and tasks will stay up-to-date as data is added and/or updated in both Jira or Forecast
• When using Forecast with Jira, your people scheduling, project planning, estimates, time tracking, and high-level portfolio overview will always be synchronized with your current development tasks and issues
• You can choose to prefix your task titles in Forecast with the ID of their linked Jira issues
• Learn about synchronizing issues across the two platforms.
• Learn about synchronizing milestones.
• Learn about synchronizing Jira issues date fields to Forecast.

 

Synchronize an Existing Forecast Project

Step 1: Go to the project's settings  in Forecast

Step 2: Scroll down to the bottom of the settings page, see Apps and Integrations

 

Step 3: Click on sync to Jira cloud

 

Synchronize issues between synced projects

Forecast gives you the ability to synchronize issues between the two platforms. To do so you simply need to click on the three dots at the end of one of your Forecast tasks, click on Move to Jira, select issue and Jira subtask issue type and click Create. The video below shows you exactly this.

Once the issue has been moved successfully to Jira you will see its name carrying the name of the Jira project that is synced to. 

Synchronize milestones between synced projects

From the scoping section of your Forecast projects you can synchronize milestones into Jira. To do so you click on the three dots at the end of your milestone and chose Move to Jira and select Create. If you have set up required custom fields in your Jira project, Forecast will ask you to chose the data input for those fields before you can select Create. The video below shows how to sync a Forecast milestone to Jira.

It is important to note that synchronizing a milestone will not synchronize tasks under that milestone automatically (to do so see Synchronize issues between synched projects above). When successfully synced, the milestones in Forecast will have the Jira icon next to them.

Change Jira Prefix Settings

Step 1: Go to the Jira integration page in your admin panel in Forecast

 

Step 2: Select whether you prefer None, Simple, or Full Jira prefix on your issues in Forecast, i.e. Tasks

It may take some time before you see the changes in Forecast depending on how many tasks need to be updated.

Synchronize Jira issues' date fields to Forecast

With the Jira Cloud integration Forecast lets you synchronize the start dates of your Jira issues into Forecast. Some important things to note:

• Synchronizing start dates will override start dates on already existing Forecast tasks with the start dates on the associated Jira issues if these are not already identical
• Existing task start dates in Forecast will only get synchronized to Jira when they are updated in Forecast.

Start date synchronization can be found and enabled here:

Step 1: Go to the Jira integration page in your admin panel in Forecast and select change

Step 2: Select the Jira date field that contains your issue start dates in Jira and click change

 

Existing Forecast tasks may take up to 24 hours before you see the changes in Forecast.