Pulling Time Off Requests from BambooHR to Jira Service Management

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Getting visibility into team member's availability is crucial for meeting deadlines and managing resources effectively. Many organizations struggle with manually tracking employee time off across different systems, which can lead to missed milestones and inefficient resource allocation. In this blog post, we'll explore how to automate the process of pulling time off data from BambooHR into Jira.

Why Automate Time Off Management?

Project managers often juggle multiple projects with committed milestones and assigned team members. Having up-to-date visibility into upcoming time off is essential for:

1. Accurate resource allocation
2. Adjusting project timelines and milestones
3. Setting realistic expectations with stakeholders
4. Avoiding missed deadlines due to unexpected absences

By automating the transfer of time off data from BambooHR to Jira, project managers can save valuable time and focus on more critical tasks.

Benefits of Automation

Implementing this automation offers several key advantages:

• Improved visibility into team member availability
• More accurate project timelines and deliverable dates
• Clearer expectations for management based on actual team capacity
• Reduced manual data entry and potential for human error

Leveraging the BambooHR API

To pull time off data from BambooHR, we'll use the "Who's Out" API method. This API returns a sorted list of employees who will be out, including company holidays, for a specified period. For more information, refer to API documentation.

Request parameters: The API methods requires the following input parameters:

• start (optional) - a date in the form YYYY-MM-DD - defaults to the current date.
• end (optional) - a date in the form YYYY-MM-DD - defaults to 14 days from the start date.

Here's a sample response from the API:

Integration Options

There are several ways to integrate BambooHR with Jira:

1. Custom coding:

Develop a custom solution to pull data from the BambooHR API and push it to Jira.

2. Integration platforms: Use tools like Zapier or Workato to create automated workflows between BambooHR and Jira.

3. OnRamp: Utilize purpose-built integrations like OnRamp to integrate BambooHR with Jira, which can automatically synchronize time-off requests.

Using OnRamp

Here's an example of how to set up the integration:

1. Use the BambooHR "Other" trigger to pull time off data.

2. Set up the trigger mapping as follows: 

key:timeoff_key=customfield_10117

map:id=customfield_10064 

map:name=customfield_10065 

map:employeeId=customfield_10079 

map:start=customfield_10053 

map:end=customfield_10054 

map:type=customfield_10055 

config:data_type=time_off 

This configuration ensures that:

• A unique key is created for each time off entry to avoid duplicates
• Relevant data fields are mapped to corresponding Jira custom fields
• Time off data for the past and next 30 days is pulled by default

Conclusion

Take the first step towards more efficient project management by implementing this integration in your organization today.