Why New Verve made the BambooHR Integration for Jira

BambooHR Integration for Jira is simple app that enables you to view and manage employee absence requests in context. The app easily connects Jira to BambooHR so up-to-date employee absence information is available in one, easily accessible place, allowing for more accurate project planning.

The idea for the app came when Synergy Learning approached New Verve looking for a solution that could display information from BambooHR in Jira. There was no "off-the-shelf" solution available, so we decided to build one ourselves!

About Synergy Learning

Synergy Learning is a full service provider of learning technology who are partners of Open-Source technologies Moodle and Totara since 2005 and 2011 respectively. They work with their clients to create learning platforms which deliver unique learning experiences with measurable results.

What is BambooHR?

BambooHR is an HR tool designed for small and medium businesses. It can be used to collect, maintain, and analyze your people data, improve how you hire talent, onboard new employees, manage compensation, and develop your company culture. A critical feature is leave management, an employee can use BambooHR to raise a time off request which then goes through an approval process according to the policies that you define!

Alongside many of our own clients, we are also an avid customer of the BambooHR product which is why we believed that we were strongly positioned to develop a quality product that met Synergy Learning's specific needs as well as delivering wider market appeal.

What challenges did Synergy Learning have?

Synergy Learning had to seek information outside of Jira to work out resource capacity and ultimately inform decisions on when work could be delivered. This approach was inefficient and staff were losing time.

They required a tool that could provide information at their fingertips and could reflect the changes made to employee absences in real-time. The solution also had to adapt to the team's specific PPM requirements by being customizable and integrating with other project management tools, like Tempo Timesheets and Capacity Planner.

We created an app that seamlessly integrated Jira with BambooHR.

How does our app solve Synergy Learning's problems?

Synergy Learning required a solution that put absence information directly into Jira.

Our app does exactly this, by syncing absence requests automatically from BambooHR into a dedicated Jira project. Requests are sync'd for any Jira user that has a matching email address in BambooHR. We aimed to keep the app as simple and as easy-to-use as possible.

Synergy Learning needed to have control over how often the sync happened. As well as adding CRON support in our solution, we added some easy dropdown options (e.g. 'every 2 hours'), so no need to learn the CRON syntax! To ensure that information in Jira is up-to-date and accurate, any changes made to the time-off requests in BambooHR are automatically changed in Jira.

Synergy Learning also needed to be able to choose which time off requests were sync'd from BambooHR. This meant that if request types were deemed confidential (for example, compassionate leave) or if the requests were not useful (for example, a work from home request) they could be omitted. We implemented a simple select list for configuring which of the time off types in BambooHR should be included in the sync.

Enabling Synergy Learning to see absences in context

In order to work with their current solution, Synergy Learning needed our app to integrate with tools from the Tempo stack. Tempo tools simplify time tracking, resource planning and budget management in Jira.

Our app has powerful integration capabilities with these popular Tempo tools. Each time a user has a time-off request approved in BambooHR, a corresponding worklog is automatically created for that user in Tempo Timesheets.

In Tempo Planner, a plan is automatically created every time a user requests time off. We also ensure that the plan's status (either 'pending' or 'approved') is kept in sync with its equivalent status in BambooHR.

Their project planning tools enable Synergy Learning to efficiently and easily track time in Jira. With the addition of BambooHR Integration for Jira to track absence management, Synergy Learning now has all the information they need to more accurately plan in one, centralized location.

Project managers can now refer quickly and easily to timesheets to check when people are off. Crucially this information then feeds into capacity reports. When planning ahead, project managers can use the Resource Planning page in Tempo Planner to check when people plan to be off in future.

By creating BambooHR Integration for Jira to meet the needs of Synergy Learning, we have equipped scrum masters, project managers, and the wider PMO in organisations to forecast accurate completion dates based on team capacity without leaving Jira.

How has the app impacted Synergy Learning?

BambooHR Integration for Jira has enhanced Synergy Learning's project planning capabilities by providing employee absence information in context. Peter Hinds, Head of Operations at Synergy Learning said:

"This app is a time saver!

For the person requesting leave: You no longer have to post your time manually. This was a bug bear either to do proactively before you leave or compete with the many "catch-up" tasks when you returned.

For leave approvers: The integration means no more manual entries and better project management!"

Find out more about how BambooHR Integration for Jira can help your team in our user guide and start your trial today on the Atlassian Marketplace.

If you’re looking to integrate Tempo with your other tools, New Verve are the experts you need! They have a great history of successful implementation with the Tempo suite such as integrating Tempo Budgets to eazyBI in order to improve the reporting and analytics of another company.

Nigel Rochford is the Founder and CEO of New Verve Consulting