Integrated services with Jira and Microsoft in the food ingredient industry

How do you make sure important conversations in Microsoft Teams do not become information silos when the actual work is managed in Jira?

We spoke with Michael Pelfrey, IT Operations Manager at Skidmore. During Atlassian Team in Anaheim, we talked about how his team connects Microsoft Teams with Jira for internal support, incident management, and agile development.

Skidmore operates in the food ingredient industry with around 250 employees and an IT team of 10. For Michael, that means supporting internal customers efficiently with a relatively small team. Still, he had to make sure Jira contains the information needed to understand, manage, and escalate work. The challenge was familiar: the work was in Jira, but much of the communication happened somewhere else.

When incident communication gets stuck in Microsoft Teams

Information silos were particularly noticeable during critical incidents. Skidmore was already using the native Microsoft Teams integration for Jira. But the team still had to manually summarize Teams discussions and explain in Jira what had happened.

With Microsoft 365 for Jira, the team can create a dedicated Teams chat directly from an incident and keep the conversation connected to Jira work items. Automation can also create a backup of the Teams conversation, helping retain important details after the incident.

This makes it easier for support staff to understand what happened and escalate requests without reconstructing the conversation manually. The principle is simple: not every Teams message needs to end up in Jira. What matters is connecting the right communication to the right work.

Making the JSM help desk easier to access

Michael’s favorite feature tackles another common support challenge: getting employees to use the Jira Service Management portal in the first place.

Skidmore makes the Jira Service Management customer portal available directly in Microsoft Teams. According to Michael, this has increased portal engagement and reduced the number of support requests arriving by email.

Employees can raise and follow requests where they already communicate. The IT team still gets the structure of Jira Service Management behind the scenes. Jira remains responsible for the request, workflow, and tracking, while Teams provides an accessible interface for employees.

Connecting Jira and Microsoft without adding another silo

For Michael, integrating Jira and Microsoft is ultimately less about individual features and more about keeping information in context. Employees can stay in Teams for communication and support requests. The IT team can manage incidents and other work in Jira. Relevant conversations remain connected to that work instead of disappearing into another information silo.

That becomes increasingly interesting as AI enters these workflows as well. AI-assisted summaries or suggested next steps become more useful when they have access to communication that is actually relevant to the Jira work, rather than simply more information.

Michael’s experience offers a straightforward lesson for using Jira and Microsoft in the food ingredient industry: Jira can provide the structure, Microsoft Teams can support the conversation, and Microsoft 365 for Jira can connect the context between them. Thank you, Michael, for sharing your experience on how to put this into practice.