Data Synchronization with Connected Tools

Owned by Anna Ciepłota
Last updated: Feb 06, 2024 by Piotr Koszela
3 min read

Types of Synchronization

Initial sync happens only during the first startup of the plugin. When the plugin is starting up for the first time, synchronization does not occur because there are no Boxes in BigPicture/BigGantt yet. At this stage, the parent-child relations do not influence the synchronization process. Synchronization does not consider the configuration of the Box, i.e., The Work Breakdown Structure hierarchy (because those things don't exist yet).

All cases of synchronization take into account the following:

  • Task modes

  • Jira permissions of the user who initialized the change

Types of Synchronization

When does it occur

Who is the author of a change?

Types of Synchronization

When does it occur

Who is the author of a change?

Full sync (re-sync)

User actions can trigger a request for data synchronization when a user:

  • Opens a Box (e.g., enters any Box module such as the Gantt, Resources, or Roadmap module)

  • Enters Jira Issue Details page with the 'Work Breakdown Structure' panel of either BigPicture or BigGantt enabled.

An Admin user can manually trigger a re-sync of a Box by:

  • Clicking 'Re-sync' in the Data drop-down menu of Gantt's header.

  • Hitting the 'R' key twice on the keyboard while having the Gantt or Roadmap module open.

Full sync is in all Boxes after:

  • Turning off the plugin (restarting the plugin)

  • clearing cache

  • Plugin update



The user who triggers a request for Box data synchronization or the Scope Owner

Partial sync (task synchronization)

Partial sync happens when changes are made:

  • in the App

  • in the connected tool

If a user changes a connected tool (such as Jira or Trello), the events related to these changes are queued inside the app. If a number of changes are applied to the same issue within the interval, the last person who updated the issue will be the author of the last queued change.

When the following Jira events are received:

  • Issue Updated,

  • Issue Created,

  • Issue Deleted.

When the user made any of the following changes in the app:

  • The user moved a task on the Gantt's timeline,

  • The user moved a task from one Cadence to another in the Roadmap module,

  • The user linked tasks in the Gantt.

If a user tries to perform an action for which they have insufficient Jira permissions, they can't do it, so no sync is necessary.

Author of the change in Jira or the app.

Authors of changes 

Three types of users can be listed as authors of changes: 

  • Current user (the logged-in person that makes a change; full sync is an exception)

  • Scope Owner

  • Technical user (in the Jira server, changes may be listed without any users assigned to a change) 

Corrupted Jira index

Full synchronization is not run when BigPicture gets information about the corrupted index from the Jira API. A user can perform a Jira re-index; this should solve the corrupted index problem. Users can also continue without reindexing, which can cause irreversible and unintended changes in Box scope.

Resync of all Boxes

It is not possible to trigger the synchronization of all Boxes at the same time for two following reasons:

  1. We are avoiding negative impact on BigPicture and Jira performance

  2. Full re-sync happens when entering a Box to ensure you work with current data

If you turn the plugin on and off, such action flags all Program Boxes, and full resync is performed when entering each Box. This lets us avoid triggering the resync of Boxes that are not being used.