An API Integration That JPMorgan Chase & Co. Can Bank On

Making the Connection

If you’ve ever worked with project management software, you probably know how complex and challenging it can be to pull data at a large scale, let alone the sheer lack of visibility into everyday tasks.

As one of the oldest and most respected financial institutions in the United States, JPMorgan Chase & Co. has built a solid foundation on innovation. When it came to finding a solution for improved oversight into the organization’s active projects, Brian Clawson, Executive Director of Innovation at JPMorgan Chase, tapped into that mindset to create a customized Alteryx macro which connected to JIRA’s API integration.

The organization utilized JIRA for their project management needs, and the limitations of canned dashboards called for a need to extract the data in a manner that presented hierarchical information of all tickets in the queue. Due to JIRA server limitations, Brian was only able to pull a limited number of records from a given JIRA project at one time. “Having JIRA projects that contained thousands of issues, I had a need to move beyond the manual server extracts,” explains Brian.

An Alteryx user since 2017, Brian looked for a solution within the Alteryx Community to help automate the ideation and project creation phases of more than 10,000 projects over the past two years. He found the JIRA Connector within the Alteryx community built by Taylor Cox, Director of BI at Enrollment First, which allowed him to obtain JIRA data in a transactional record-based format. Brian set to updating the JIRA Connector and adding in the functionality that aligned to the environment at JPMC. With each improvement, more groups within JPMC saw the benefit of the connector and the user base expanded, and now sits at over 200 users.

“The open nature of the JIRA Connector has led to increased innovation with its capabilities. Just recently a user reached out with a problem trying to do something with the JIRA Connector and through discussion with him we identified a new feature that I had not previously considered, and I will be able to use that feature in the work directly supporting my own Line of Business,” says Brian.

The connector parses and processes the JSON data into a consumable format for further analysis of critical stats Brian’s team was looking for — field type, user roles—whom a project is assigned to, process owner, etc.

By using Alteryx to automate this manual work, Brian was able to rejoin processes that previously had no visibility.

“Before using the JIRA Connector, my stakeholders used to manually run an Execution file for status updates and JIRA hygiene. This file used 2 Instances, and 8 different JQLs to pull the necessary data, and was run 2-3 times a week which was very time-consuming. After automating the process through Alteryx and the JIRA Connector, the whole process is done within 8-10 mins.” –a user at JPMorgan Chase.

Enabling Access to All

Not all users throughout the organization have a technical background but everyone needs access to the data. To bridge this gap, Brian created an Alteryx chatroom, or “Helpdesk,” with dedicated support for the connector, providing a shared visibility support model for centralized documents, the ability to ask questions and serve as a feedback loop, and tools for a community of over 200 users.

The automation this community is achieving with Alteryx is helping drive wider adoption and a spirit of innovation. “Alteryx opens doors so we can make more thoughtful decisions,” says Brian.

Brian’s JIRA Connector has enabled his direct organization to save 10-20 hours a week and has broadened the team’s scope to do things they weren’t able to do before. With over 200 users across the firm the total saves could easily be in the hundreds of hours. “Automating these processes has allowed for more time to grow and add value in new ways.”

This includes the ability to apply Alteryx to all facets of the organization – help desk, control, compliance, front office, lines of business, customer community, wealth management, and corporate marketing, to name a few.

As a head of Innovation, Brian’s vision is to continue to enable his teammates and cross-functional colleagues to streamline their work. If you’re an Alteryx user and would like to access the JIRA API, please see below:

Alteryx + JIRA Connector