5 benefits of linking Jira to a leave management system

JIRA is one of the most popular project management tools in the world. The system can be further supported by multiple integrations, including the leave management plugin like Calamari. It’s considered one of the best leave management options to manage leave efficiently. There are multiple benefits of integrating Jira with a leave management system – read more to find them out!

Jira is one of the most popular bug tracking and project management tools in the world. According to the Sintel data, the company holds an 18.89% share of the bug tracking software market. Jira is not only a bug tracker but also a powerful management system used widely for workflow automation and tracking leave, absence, and resource planning in growing teams.

Jira is popular among high-tech companies responsible for software development and web development, bringing multiple project management paradigms into one place, including kanban boards, to-do lists, and agile principles. With multiple plug-ins and extensions, Jira Software can become a central control board for a high-tech company, for example, a software development company or a high-tech product vendor. Calamari, as a tool for Jira, allows users to track leave policies, public holidays, and other absences within Jira, making it a complete leave tracker.

With high-tech companies being highly dependent on engineers' and specialists’ work, integrating the information about the availability and leave plans into the management in Jira and syncing it with Jira issues significantly improves planning. Integration with multiple other tools enhances the overall workflow, especially in 2025 where agile teams demand a seamless management tool ecosystem.

Why integrate Jira Cloud with a leave management system?

Jira is, in fact, a sophisticated and detailed tool to manage a particular employee’s tasks and deadlines to maximize his or her productivity. Moreover, the tool enables quick and convenient management of traced bugs and features demanded, to further boost the productivity of a particular engineer or coder. It also helps balancethe workload effectively across the team. But first, they need to work – and that can be a surprisingly tough challenge when tracking leave balances and availability manually.

That’s why enriching Jira with an out-of-office tracking plugin or a dedicated leave management solution is a must. Yet, it brings several other advantages.

All employee leave data securely stored in one central management system

An external leave management tool that is well integrated with Jira (Calamari is a great example) is a safe and secure repository of HR-related information. It allows teams to manage leave requests, including vacations and sick days, in a structured and compliant way. Keeping this data in a spreadsheet available somewhere in Jira or a shared drive is a significant risk. The company is not only vulnerable to an attack from the outside, but also mistake-prone, with a careless employee able to copy or share the data with someone unallowed.

Thanks to integrations with Jira, HR teams can configure workflows and even create special Jira issues related to leave tracking, improving visibility and alignment across departments. This approach improves data security and supports efficient project management by keeping managers informed about employee availability.

According to Statista data, there were 1001 data breaches with 155.8 million records exposed in 2020. A data breach, either intentional or unintentional, is a serious risk that the company needs to consider.

Easily track team leave status for better HR and project management

Some leaves are highly unexpected – accidents or sudden family matters. But others can be managed and reported with significant information up to the head. Having this information stored in one place and easily accessible, the project manager or team leader can plan all the activities in a more accurate and better way.

According to the DMEC study, compliant and effective leave management is a challenge not to be underestimated. The bigger the company, the more time and resources are required to do it, with the majority of companies needing between one and three specialists.

Automating their job is a quick way to do it faster, and enabling the project managers to access the information they require from the tool they are using currently (Slack, Jira, or anything else) boosts the process even more.

Support sick leave, vacation requests, and other employee leave types in one system

Leave management is not a piece of cake. One of the key challenges is to determine what type of leave has been taken – whether the employee is sick, on vacation, or paternity/maternity leave.

An external leave management solution, available in the marketplace, supports these types of leave and enables the company to add other types – for example, self-development time, daily working hours tracking, or half-day leave if one wishes to. Furthermore, a sophisticated tool like Calamari enables the company to manage leaves for a particular employee, to make it fitting to his or her geographical location, religion, or other factors. For example, an employee can get a paid leave on his or her country's Independence Day, aligning with the public holiday calendar and their declared nationality. It also supports working across different time zones, which is essential when managing large teams globally.

Moreover, it is possible to merge the Jira calendar with public holidays in different countries tracked by the leave management system. You can even configure custom workflows and define placeholders for future absences, helping project managers cover many dependencies well in advance. This flexibility ensures a smooth operation and reduces the need for manual coordination, which is often prone to errors.

Also, the company can fit the leave types to the employee’s beliefs – for example, granting separate leave days for orthodox Christians and people celebrating Christmas according to the Gregorian calendar. Tools that integrate natively with Jira can show charts, visual summaries, and improve planning through better resource profile management.

Streamline leave management to align with business and resource planning goals

An increase in productivity and clarity in the management is a great way to increase the overall effectiveness of the company. By combining information from Jira and leave management, project managers can maximize productivity without juicing out the employees. Tools that ensure that employees are not overbooked help maintain a healthy workload balance, aligning with broader resource planning efforts.

In fact, keeping the team exhausted is counterproductive. According to Harvard Business Review, 94% of vacations have good ROI regarding their relationship with productivity and the attitude of the employees.

Ability to deliver an enclosed business environment

Finally, integrating Jira with leave management enables the company to build a productivity ecosystem with Jira as a central control device. Jira delivers multiple integrations with popular business tools like Microsoft Office, Google Workspace (previously G Suite), or Slack. Combined with a leave plugin, natively integrated and available in the marketplace, this creates a seamless workflow for teams.

Such a management system allows moderators or HR team leads to handle leaves, configure rules, and manage schedules with clarity. The ability to build a comprehensive and fitting solution is a huge advantage for modern companies.

Abandoning this opportunity is a clear way to stay behind the competition.

Summary

Jira is a great tool used mostly by tech leaders to deliver their software projects effectively and on time. Integrating it with the leave management software makes it even more versatile and fitting to the business needs of a software development company or a tech vendor.

If you wish to speak with the Calamari team about integrating Jira with the rest of the tech ecosystem, don’t hesitate to contact us now! And if you are eager to know more about HR management, read our HR blog.

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