Ecliptic Technologies, Inc. has released The Connector, a Microsoft Project plugin that allows seamless integration with JIRA. The Connector allows users of JIRA to use Microsoft Project for doing planning and scheduling and provides an easy way to synchronize the information in Microsoft Project with the issues in JIRA. As a Microsoft Project plugin, The Connector provide an easily accessible toolbar right in Microsoft Project allowing quick access to JIRA. More information and a trial version of The Connector is available at http://www.the-connector.com

Nice product, although I don't don't think it will be convenient to constantly switch between two applications: Jira and MS Project. What I would actually prefer is to have a view on my Gantt chart directly from Jira. This way I can assign tasks, their start and end days, dependencies and resources in Jira and then just click on Jira Gantt chart to see a visual representation of the task timeline all from within the confines of the same Jira application. Would that be feasible at all? I am kind of surprised nobody is doing it (or at least nobody I know of). Best, Dmitriy Setrakyan GridGain - Grid Computing Made Simple

Nice product, although I don't don't think it will be convenient to constantly switch between two applications: Jira and MS Project.

What I would actually prefer is to have a view on my Gantt chart directly from Jira. This way I can assign tasks, their start and end days, dependencies and resources in Jira and then just click on Jira Gantt chart to see a visual representation of the task timeline all from within the confines of the same Jira application.

Would that be feasible at all? I am kind of surprised nobody is doing it (or at least nobody I know of).

Best,
Dmitriy Setrakyan
GridGain - Grid Computing Made Simple

Ironically, I've been considering doing just this. Though we were looking at a cronned "export" of the jira issues to a .mpp file. It'd be nice if this existed already (or something like it) but I also haven't had any luck finding anything like it.

Task Adapter can export data from Jira to MSProject XML files. It does not support "cron" mode yet, but it will soon. Try it - http://taskadapter.com

 

From my experience these products designed for different things and it is not that straightforward to integrate them from semantic point of view (not from technological). I found that MS Project is good at planning at macro level (relatively long tasks - weeks, several days) as opposed to JIRA that excels at tracking issues at micro level (detailed tasks, bugs and so on). Working on these different levels involves pretty different tasks and requires different effective tools. I can not imagine tracking micro issues in MS Project in real life projects... On our projects we came to the following scheme: 1. MS Project tasks correspond to JIRA components 2. Detailed JIRA tasks do not map to MS Project tasks at all Lack of the Gantt functionality in JIRA I explain by narrow posioning of JIRA as micro level issue tracking tool. Best regards, Savochkin Egor Systems Architect LANIT (www.lanit.ru)

Although half year passed since last comment, but still... Absolutely agree that MS Project is rather used for higher level, while JIRA for detailed issues. But this depend on how good is "the-connector" implemented. If it were really good product we might work in the following way: 1. Create high-level skeleton with MS Project. 2. Send to JIRA this hight level tasks 3. Create sub-tasks for each JIRA task 4. Track time spent and % completed for each small JIRA issue 5. Synch in MS Project from JIRA to track on high level But as far as I understand "the-connector" will not work in this way since: 1. It does not handle correctly hierarchical JIRA issues (sub-tasks) 2. It does not handle original and remaining estimate for a task and actual work (% completed) (while this is quite simple think) 3. Etc From the other hands if one plan to create 10-50 JIRA issues, it may be good idea to do this in MS Project and than send all to JIRA, but this require additional configuration of MS Project. For example: 1. One should add custom columns Text1-Text10 and populate with real data since they are used by JIRA. This is not so hard, but "the-connector" could have this options himself 2. JIRA component is handled by ID, not by name, so we need to connect to JIRA db directly to get to know the id of each component 3. No option to set JIRA Original estimate value 4. No option for hierarchical JIRA issues (do not really need, but still...) So I will try to find better alternative than "the-connector". If anyone can advice -- I'll highly appreciate! -Ol

You can try Ceptah Bridge for MS Project & JIRA. It's an MS Project add-in which provides two-way customizable synchronization with JIRA. You can maintain your project plan in MS Project, publish it in JIRA and track the linked assignments there.

We develop a JIRA Project View Plugin. Very useful and almost substitute MS-Project. You can download the trial version at the follow address, just ask us a trial licence writing to jira at ecore dot com dot br or acessing http://www.ecore.com.br/jiraplugin/ Please, let us know if you need further assistance. We appreciate your attention. Best regards, Michel Nehme Commercial Analyst e-Core Desenvolvimento de Software Tel: +55 (51) 2103-9140 www.ecore.com.br NY Office: e-Core IT Solutions Phone: +1 (914) 682-2009 www.ecoreinternational.com

Check out: POJ 1.0 - Software for integration Microsoft Project and Jira http://crydev.com/lang-en/products/35-software/77-poj

JIRA Gantt-Chart Project is a native JIRA plugin, which extends the JIRA platform to provide a set of powerful project management facilities using Gantt-Chart. Precisely, it implements the most useful project planning features of Microsoft Project and a real-time development tracking solution.

• Customizable issue table in Gantt-chart
• Timeline display configuration: Zoom to Fit, Pre-defined useful timeline ranges and User defined timeline range
• Powerful filter solutions based on: Assignee, Component, Version, Issue Status and Keyword filter
• Reset to Today location
• Dynamic "Start date" and "End date" analyze algorithm
• Issue Dependency Management
• Sub-task and N-level containment supportCustomizable calendar Week configuration, Non Working Day/Working Day setting
• Direct edition of issues in Gantt-chart table
• Drag edition in Gantt-chart diagram to move issue or change its during
• Visual Dependency manipulation in Gantt-chart diagram
• Partial time plannification
• More features will come in the future release

The supported Web browsers: 

• IE 8
• FireFox 3.6.x and 4
• Chrome 11.0.x
• Safari 5.0.5
• Opera 11.10