The JIRA Menu
The Connector has a menu option that will appear between the Window and Help menu options on the main menu bar. From this menu, you can access all of the same functionality as the JIRA toolbar.
Logging Into JIRA / Logging Out of JIRA
The Connector requires a user to login before any functionality of The Connector can be used. Once an individual enters a valid username and password, (this should be the same as their JIRA login), the plug-in will keep an active session open with JIRA as long as the session doesn't time out. If the session times out, you will need to re-login.
A user can optionally check the "Remember Last Login" option to have the plug-in default the last user name that was used to login to JIRA.
Once the user is logged in, the button text will change to "Logout" and pressing it will prompt the user to log out. This can be used if you wish to deactivate the current session with JIRA.
Project Setup
Before using The Connector within a given project, it must be initialized through The Connector setup. This will automatically appear whenever trying to access JIRA functionality within an un-initialized project plan.
The plug-in will prompt you with the above message indicating that the project file has not been initialized. Clicking "OK" will take you to the Project Setup Dialog.
To setup a Microsoft Project file to use with The Connector, you must specify which of the Microsoft Project custom fields will be used to store the related JIRA issue information.
NOTE: The JIRA project is optional and may be left blank. If you specify a value here, new tasks will automatically be created under this project unless you override that value through the issue editor.
To select a project, you may either type in the project ID, or use the "Browse JIRA Projects" option to select a project from a list.
Also, each project must be initialized with the custom fields built into Microsoft Project for storing the JIRA issue ID, JIRA issue status, JIRA issue type, and JIRA issue priority. There are 30 available text fields on each project task, but you may only use each field once.
NOTE: Different project files can have different configurations for these values. This allows for flexibility and customization as needed in case the custom fields are being used by other 3rd party or custom plug-ins. These options default based on what is configured under the "Configuration" dialog.
Once these values are provided, press the "OK" button and the project file will be initialized. Once initialized, the project setup is completed and you are able to use The Connector.