Connecting Atlassian Goals in the platform to Jira Align Work Items

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Hey there, Community!

I’m Nick Gretta, a Senior Software Engineer working on Jira Align, here to tell you about one of the latest features we’ve released to help you align your work to your goals!

As of the 11.12 release in Jira Align, cloud users with Atlassian Guard enabled can now connect goals from the Goals app to Jira Align work items (themes, epics, and capabilities), and view those connections within both the Goals app and Jira Align.

This feature is a piece of the puzzle for Atlassian’s System of Work, driving better teamwork through connectivity across all of the tools in our portfolio, and enabling our customers to achieve impact that would be impossible alone.

How it works

Goals app

When viewing goals in the Goals app, Jira Align users will now see a Jira Align tab. Here, you can select the Add Jira Align items button to start creating the connection between your goals and Jira Align work items. Doing so will show a popup that allows you to choose the work item type that you want to connect, and conduct a search for your specific work item’s name. In the screenshot below, I'm adding my epic, named Nick’s Demo Epic, to my goal!

Selecting a work item from the search results list then creates that connection between the goal and the work item, which you can review on the Jira Align tab.

Jira Align

Over on the Jira Align side, these goal connections are now visible in the work item details panels. When you navigate to their work item and open the details panel, you’ll notice a new Atlassian Goals section. Expanding this section will show a table, displaying which goals from the Goals app have been connected to this item. For example, here is the details panel for Nick’s Demo Epic, which I connected my goal to earlier:

The table here shows the name of the goal, the current status, and the goal's owner. Selecting the goal name will open the goal in the Goals app in a new tab, while hovering over the owner’s avatar will show a tooltip with the owner’s name.

If you look at the details panel above, you’ll notice the Objectives section below the new Atlassian Goals section. It’s important to note that the details panel for your work items will continue to show a separate section for Jira Align objectives or strategic goals. These two are considered separate objects from Atlassian goals and are created and managed in Jira Align.

Coming soon

We’re continuing to iterate and improve on the connectivity between our apps and have exciting things on the horizon. With these new connection abilities, we will also soon be making this information available in Atlassian Analytics, allowing you to gain deeper insight into your work through custom reporting.

We are always open to hearing from you! As we continue to introduce new functionality for you to leverage in tracking work to achieve your goals, your feedback about what’s working, what’s missing, and what we can improve on, is invaluable for us to build the best products we can.