Creating Jira issues based on Initiatives

With Cortex’s Jira integration, you can take Initiatives and action items to the next level. When you combine Initiatives and Jira, Cortex will automatically create Jira issues for outstanding action items based on your Initiatives. 

To automatically create Jira issues based on Initiatives, you’ll need to set up an issue configuration. An issue configuration combines a set of filters and a Jira configuration — for example, the types of services the configuration applies to, and the Jira projects the issue should go into. This flexibility allows managers to be sure that issues for their teams end up in the right place.

To create an issue configuration, select the Initiative you want to work with, and  navigate to the Issues tab. 

From there, you’ll have the option to Create your first issue. Note that your integration with Jira must be set up before you’ll be able to set up an issue configuration.

Select Create to open a modal window with the configuration workflow.

You’ll first be prompted to Name the issue config. This should be a human-readable name, so it’s clear whose team the issues belong to and the project issues should be assigned to. The rest of the workflow includes dynamic fields loaded from Jira — the fields that populate depend upon what your particular Jira instance requires for new issues.

Once you create an issue config, you’ll see it populate within the Issues tab.

At this stage, Cortex will automatically create a corresponding issue in Jira for you. Cortex will create a single parent task for each service, and each failing rule is created as a subtask. This makes it easy for you to track the aggregate data, while maintaining visibility into all failing rules.

You can modify your configuration(s) at any point. To edit an existing configuration, click on the config’s name within the Issues tab — this will open the edit modal.

If you want to delete an issue config, you can do so from the edit modal. When you click Delete, you’ll be asked to confirm the decision.

The Jira projects related to your issue configurations will also display on the Initiative’s page beside the passing and failing rules.

Once a service passes an action item, Cortex will attempt to close out the corresponding issue in Jira. If Cortex is unable to close a issue, a comment will be left notifying you that an action item is now Passing. Cortex will go through this process any time a scorecard is refreshed and rules are reevaluated.

If a new rule is added to an Initiative, a new Jira issue will be opened for that specific action item based on the configuration you’ve defined. Cortex will also reopen a Jira issue if a passing action item reverts to failure.

When using issue configurations, think about what makes the most sense for your team. You can create just one configuration for an Initiative, so that all Cortex-created issues are directed to a single Jira project for team members to pick up from there. There’s also no limit to the number of configs you can add. By setting up multiple configurations, you can automate which project each set of issues belongs to, minimizing the manual work involved in managing issues. 

With the Jira integration, Cortex gives you the power to define and automate project routing according to your exact needs.