Jira, developed by Atlassian, is known as one of the most powerful tools for project and issue tracking. It has become an indispensable part of software development, project management, and agile teams around the world. However, with its widespread usage and robust customization capabilities, organizations are increasingly looking at Jira as more than just a project management tool. One question that often arises is: Can Jira be used as a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system?

Short answer: Yes, it absolutely can, even as a DIY solution.

Long answer: While Jira wasn’t built specifically for this purpose, with some customization and the right add-ons, it can indeed be adapted to function as a basic CRM system. In this blog post, we’ll explore the capabilities, advantages, limitations, and key considerations involved in using Jira as a CRM. 

Defining a CRM

We’re making the assumption that if you’re looking for this type of content, you have a pretty solid idea of what a CRM is, so we’ll skip right ahead to the Capabilities of Jira.

What Can Jira Do as a CRM?

At its core, Jira is designed to track tasks, manage workflows, and facilitate collaboration among teams. These features, when looked at closely, overlap in many ways with the foundational requirements of a CRM. As a matter of fact, Atlassian had a module called Jira Work Management, for which the idea was to democratize the Atlassian Suite to teams beyond IT and Software developers. Since then, JWM has been fused with Jira into… Jira, but the effort to spread the use cases of Jira to marketing, HR, and sales teams is still well present within the tool. 

Out-of-the-box, this means that you will be able to create a simple Sales Pipeline using Jira’s template at the Project level for lead and deals management. This means adding, modifying, and redefining concepts such as:

• Whole project is now the Sales Pipeline
• Workflows can be created in order to create the framework of a CRM
• Issues are now deals and can be tracked and managed onto a kanban board view
• Contacts and Company names and other interesting pieces of information can be stored using custom fields

And more….

By leveraging custom fields, workflows, dashboards, and automation rules, Jira can be transformed into a basic CRM system that supports tracking customer interactions, managing deals, and automating certain sales processes. In other words, while Jira isn’t inherently a CRM, it has the potential to be shaped into one with the right approach.

What will you need to do to make Jira a CRM?

As mentioned in the previous section, there is a lot of customization, post-template, that you will need to do in order to make Jira a nice basic CRM.  The flexibility Jira offers through customizable workflows, custom fields,  automation capabilities, connectivity to other Atlassian tools (Jira Service Management and Confluence), and dashboards can be utilized to mirror the operations of a traditional CRM. 

Do note that if you are thinking of going the DIY route that costs will come in terms of time and maintenance! 

With that said, here are some key segments that you should consider if you are going the DIY route to make Jira a CRM: 

1. Custom Workflow and Sales Pipeline Template

As mentioned, Jira does provide some built-in templates that you can, and should, leverage to save you time. For the context of a CRM, there is one named “Sales Pipeline” that can be a solid foundation for a CRM. However, do note that you will most likely need to make some slight modifications to the workflow stages/statuses to replicate the experience you have in a typical CRM: the template has something basic laid-out, but it needs some personalization. 

To do so is very simple – just go in the project’s settings → Workflows → Edit workflow. 

Some very typical stages would be things like lead generation, nurturing, opportunity tracking, and closure. So you could absolutely replicate that in the workflow “diagram” editor. 

With Jira, you can create specific statuses and define the transitions between them (for example, a deal in lead generation must go to nurturing before it can head into closure. 

Do note that you will be able to create some Workflow automation rules that can also be applied to trigger actions at each stage, such as notifying salespeople or generating follow-up tasks.

2. Custom Fields for Customer Information

The main “issue” with using Jira as a CRM is that it isn’t built to be one. This means that for things like storing customer or company information, your best bet if you DIY, will most likely be to go with Custom Fields. 

The Sales Pipeline template does a good job of providing you with some fields already, but you might want or need more!

To add them is also fairly simple: Project Settings → Custom Fields → Create Custom Fields. Then you will need to add them to your Sales Pipeline Issue Screen (Project Settings → Screens → Pipeline Name → Select fields to add → Save).

This also means that the best way to work with a CRM in Jira using the DIY method will be to have a project as your Sales pipeline for all your deals, and have issues be a deal, inside them with all the information relevant to the deal and the client. 

3. Dashboards and Reports for Sales Tracking

Since you’re working inside Jira, one thing that you should absolutely take advantage of if you are building the CRM yourself is the built-in dashboard and reporting capabilities. While the “Summary tab” of the project might provide you with some interesting data on the health of your pipeline, you might want additional information. This is where the dashboard and reports will come in handy. 

Jira’s dashboard capabilities allow users to build visual representations of their workflows and progress. In a CRM setup, dashboards can be customized to track key performance indicators such as the number of deals in each pipeline stage, the total value of deals in progress, or the average time to close a deal.

You can also generate reports that provide insights into sales performance, but do note that for really advanced reporting, you might need to look into marketplace apps. 

4. Automation for CRM-Specific Tasks

One cool element that you should absolutely use is the integration with Automation for Jira. In a traditional CRM, you will have some automation steps be present to save some time and avoid mistakes. But by default, Jira does not have that in Place.  For example, you can set up automations to send alerts when a deal reaches a specific stage, assign tasks to team members when new opportunities are created, or automatically update customers on the status of their inquiries. While these automations can mimic CRM workflows, they will need to be carefully crafted to match the unique processes of each organization.

It’s fairly simple to set up as well!  Project settings → Automation → Create automation Rule. The tool uses a “ IF THEN” no-code method, which means that most should be able to create simple rules without any issues. 

Don’t forget to check out the templates, some rules might already have the foundation created, like the one in the picture above for “When an issue is transitioned → then automatically assign”

5. Connectivity with Confluence and Jira Service Desk

The best part of using the Atlassian ecosystem is that there is synergy and built-in integration between the tools. For example: in the deal (issue) you are able to link customer tickets, which can help you track interactions and reduce data silos by sharing the information on those tickets with the client-facing teams.  In another example, a Confluence page can be linked to the deal (issue) so that customer notes can be neatly stored.  

Taking advantage of the connectivity of those tools is really something that can elevate your basic CRM into something quite solid

Answering the question: Can Jira be used as a CRM?

Jira can absolutely be set up to mimic the functionality of a CRM, and even offer a very solid foundation for a sales pipeline. If you are already using Jira within your company, going this route is something that makes sense: You’re consolidating teams into fewer tools, and removing data silos for client-facing teams. 

Also, if your team is already using Jira, then your users will already be familiar with the tool and won’t need to learn a new system. This can reduce the friction typically associated with adopting new software and allow teams to focus on what matters—managing their customer relationships effectively.  

In other words – this can be a definite win for all parties involved. But that isn’t to say that building a CRM using a DIY method is a sure-winner.

Limitations of Using Jira out-of-the-box as a CRM

While Jira offers flexibility, it’s important to understand that it has its limitations when it comes to CRM functionality. It wasn’t designed as a CRM system, and some features found in dedicated CRM tools are simply not available or would require complex workarounds.

1- The main things missing will be the lack of methods to import new leads from other channels (website, blogs, forums, Social media, etc.) without having to create custom integrations. Don’t get us wrong – it’s possible to do it, it’s just long and not necessarily cost effective… 

2- Another limitation comes from the reports – as mentioned, Jira was not built to be a CRM, so while the reports can be used to display some metrics, you might need some extra oomph in order to display more relevant information. 

3- The main big limitation will be in the way contact and accounts are stored and managed. We quickly explored the idea of storing data in a custom field, but make no mistake, that method is a workaround and is by no means optimal. This is because you might have some difficulties easily managing the information further down the line. A traditional CRM would oftentime have a dedicated section for the Contacts and Accounts and allow you to store more information on each element. This is going to be a pain as you scale, simply because of how limited the current functionality is built-in.  

Buying a CRM within the Atlassian Marketplace – A look into Sales CRM

If the limitations are a nono, there are two main avenues that you can do if you still want to keep Jira as a CRM 

1- You could keep using an external/traditional CRM and buy a connector app on the Atlassian Marketplace to display Sales data in Jira/Confluence/JSM. This way, you can still save some user seats on the CRM, while providing the important information for the rest of the client-facing teams. 

2- You can buy a CRM for Jira on the Atlassian Marketplace. We wrote an article on the types of CRMs on the Atlassian Marketplace as well as the ones that we would recommend. You can find this blog here.

With that said, we are going to be a bit biased here and recommend our own tool to simplify the whole Jira + CRM experience. You can check out Sales CRM on the Atlassian Marketplace. This app is a dedicated CRM inside Jira. This means that you won’t need everything from scratch and will still be able to have a very solid CRM. We built this app because we thought that the market was content with subpar dedicated products that would normally not be seen as great outside the Atlassian Ecosystem. Our way of making this a better experience for you is through our automation-first approach and also through our constant focus for third-party integrations. We believe that while a CRM in Jira can and will be useful, you will need other services to leverage all your deals and contacts, and Jira is not the best suited to be used as a dedicated app.

 In other words: 

• Deal management and customer interactions tracking via multiple Sales Pipelines
  • Activity tracking + Tasks reminders
  • Import and Export functionality
• Customer and Account tracking
• Automation Rules
• Integrations with external tools like Hubspot, Mailchimp, Google Calendar, Gmail, Google Drive, Google Contacts, Slack, and more.
• Dashboard view
• Goals and goal tracking
• And much much more…

Price is very affordable : being cheaper than dedicated CRMs and having prices of 0.42$/month/user (for a Jira free Plan of 10 users). Hubspot might provide a cheaper alternative, being free. But that’s only if you have less than two users – and you have limitations (to keep in mind!)

Before buying the tool, do consider the costs of buying vs. building the tool. And if ever there is a feature that you need – reach out to the team to see how and when we can implement it!