icbiz addresses specific topics of a typical integration between JIRA/ictime and an ERP system that have not been addressed by JIRA or other add-ons, basically in the area of configuring, collecting and exchanging billing-related data. But in fact there are many other topics that might be interesting when talking about connecting JIRA/ictime and an ERP system that can be solved with other, existing tools. Here, we provide a couple of add-ons/funtionalities that, from our point of view, are very useful when thinking about such an integration project.

Work with JIRA (Issue) Data: JIRA REST-API

As regards JIRA data itself, icbiz only adds the option to copy projects based on an existing project, as JIRA does not provide such a functionality at this moment (there are other add-ony also providing such a feature, too, but they were not suitable for integration due to missing REST services). As regards everything else for JIRA related to issues, the recommended solution is using the existing JIRA REST-API from Atlassian. A typical use case might be that you want to create/update or transition single JIRA issues based on actions in your ERP system. Please find the documentation for different versions here: https://docs.atlassian.com/jira/REST/. Tutorails can be found here: https://developer.atlassian.com/display/JIRADEV/JIRA+REST+API+Tutorials.

Enhance JIRA Project Data: Profields

JIRA does almost not provide any project data itself and focusses on issues. However, if you want to integrate your ERP with JIRA, you might want to use (or at least display) some general customer/project data from your ERP system in JIRA, too. For this, we recommend the Profields add-on: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.deiser.jira.profields. This add-on enhances the project interface with additional flexible fields by project, you can map these fields to JIRA custom fields and Profields also provides a REST- and Java-API.

Retrieve Data for Issues: nFeed, Database Custom Field, Table Grid Editor

The following add-ons provide solutions to retrieve and display data from other data sources in JIRA custom fields:

Advanced Mail Handling: JEMH

In some use cases, it is maybe easier to let your ERP system send an email to JIRA e.g. to create or update an issue instead of implementing an API. Very basic handling for incoming emails is part of JIRA itself (see https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Creating+Issues+and+Comments+from+Email), but if you want to do a bit more, you should have a look at the Enterprise Mail Handler for JIRA (JEMH): https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.javahollic.jira.jemh-ui. JEMH might also be useful to implement a kind of helpdesk for final customers.

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