Connect Jira Users and Forecast Users

In this brief article, we will walk you through the simple steps you and your team will need to take to match Jira users & Forecast user accounts before syncing the Jira application to Forecast.

This article includes:

• Atlassian GDPR policy preference update.
• How does this factor into your Forecast account?
• Edit your Atlassian email settings 
• Manually Sync Users

Atlassian GDPR Policy Preference Update

Atlassian has restricted its users' e-mail visibility. In this update, your Atlassian email is set to only be visible by you and admins.

As a result third-party Apps that you integrate with, like Forecast, are unable to view/match users from your Jira account. 

You can read more on this from the official announcement on the Atlassian Delovoper Community page.

How does this factor into your Forecast account?

When you sync a Jira project over to Forecast a few things happen: 

• Phases/Epics/Versions are transferred.
• Tasks, Issues, Bugs, and Stories are transferred. 
• Sprints are transferred
• Team members are transferred: this is the important part. 

During the sync, Forecast needs to match all of the outlined items above in order to establish the connection across both systems.

Since Atlassian now restricts the visibility of users' email addresses; Forecast is unable to verify if the user in Jira already exists in Forecast when the projected is synced over. 

Edit your Atlassian e-mail settings

Avoiding this duplication issue is very easy. Before setting up your Jira integration in Forecast follow these simple steps.

Step 1: Log in to your Atlassian Account (not Jira) 
https://start.atlassian.com/

Step 2: Click on Manage your account 

Step 3: Go to Profile & Visibility 

Step 4: Scroll to the bottom & set 'Who can view this email address' to Anyone. 

By enabling the 'Anyone' option, it is possible that everyone can view your email, third-party application installed to your Jira Cloud account will allow Forecast to match users across both systems - resulting in no duplicate users in Forecast.

Manually Syncing Users

After you have followed the aforementioned steps, you may also, as an Admin in Forecast, manually link a Jira user to a Forecast user. This can happen by following the steps below. 

Step 1: Navigate to the users' profile in Forecast. To do so go to the Admin panel (requires Admin level permission) and then click on the People tab.

Step 2: Now that you are in the users profile, navigate to the very bottom of the page and click on the dropdown named "Link this Forecast user to a Jira user profile". 

In addition you may also use, from the Admin panel again, the " Import Jira Users" function that can be found on the upper right hand side of the screen. However, importing Jira users via this function will create new virtual users in your account!

Now you are good to go to set up your Jira Cloud Integration