I wanted to tell you about a very small bit of process automation I did that resulted in a big success for my client. This client uses Jira to manage their projects. Jira is an amazing tool with lots of bells and whistles, perfect for managing large projects…but it is yet another tool! That means that users must leave the tool they primarily function in (SharePoint, Teams, Excel) and go into Jira to make updates or to create new stories. We wanted to find a way to at least make it easy for users to create new stories in Jira.
Enter process automation!
I got in touch with the Jira admin who assigned a specific email address. Then I gathered the criteria from the process owner that would be needed to create a story. Then I created a list in the team’s SharePoint site with a Power App form. I then added the form as a tab in their Teams channel so when users are chatting in their Team, they can enter an issue without having to go into SharePoint. The user fills out the form and hits “Save”. That’s all the user needs to do. Fill out a form and hit “Save”.
What the automation does is send an email to the process owner and the Jira address with all the information the user entered, and Jira automatically creates a story. The combination of the Jira email address and the process owner address are what assigns it to the correct board in Jira.
With less than 1 hour of work combined, we had an email address in Jira, a list and a form in SharePoint, a shortcut in Teams, and a flow. Users fill in a form and end up with a story in Jira. It’s that simple. This small, but significant bit of automation is going to save loads of time in the long run.
Time is money, as we know, and saving time is what automation is all about.
Leave a Reply