By Caleb Kingston
W
hether you’re an experience designer for an agency or part of a design team within a company, one of your most important responsibilities is to communicate your designs efficiently with varying types of teams: marketing, executives, and dev teams, just to name a few.
And, as you have probably experienced already, each team has its own tools for collaborating and expect you to adapt to their workflow. This can be quite painful for designers, but it doesn’t have to be.
Using Adobe XD’s integrations to connect to the tools other teams use will allow you great flexibility to communicate the way you want to, all while keeping things simple and instantly accessible for them. Let’s take a look at just a few of the Adobe XD integrations available to us that will help us bring our experience designs into the conversation, wherever they may be.
Microsoft Teams + Adobe XD
For teams working in Teams, you can use the Creative Cloud + Microsoft Teams integration to bring all your Creative Cloud work, including Adobe XD projects, directly into conversations within Teams. The Adobe Creative Cloud bot in Microsoft Teams will also keep you notified of any new comments on your XD prototypes and design specs.
How to use the Microsoft Teams integration for simplified sharing
Pull Creative Cloud assets directly into a conversation by choosing the Adobe Creative Cloud app and then searching for the project or asset you want to include.
A preview is added to your message with a link for other team members to open and collaborate on the project you’ve selected.
Slack + Adobe XD
Adobe XD features built-in sharing and commenting features that are excellent for keeping conversation in context with the design, but you may find it more convenient to discuss your projects in Slack with certain teams. This can cause serious workflow issues, because doing so breaks up the conversation into two platforms. That’s where this integration comes in to save the day.
The Creative Cloud + Slack integration connects these two solutions together to give you the commenting variety you seek in both platforms while keeping the conversation streamlined in Adobe XD.
How to use the Slack integration to keep communication cohesive
After the integration is set up, you can share your Adobe XD design with your team in Slack just as you normally would, by generating share links in XD and dropping them into your Slack conversations.
Now, any new comments or updates within your XD design will be sent to Slack, allowing you to click on the link to jump back into Adobe XD, or simply reply back to stakeholders or teammates’ comments by starting a thread so that replies in Slack will also be added to Adobe XD to maintain a streamlined thread.
Now you’re free to communicate as you please without the struggle of having to search through multiple conversations! In addition, you can proactively grant access to private XD links to named users in the Slack channel with a single click. There’s no need to go switch back to XD to grant access.
Jira Software + Adobe XD
Jira Software is a very popular tool among developers for documenting and resolving issues or updates. With the XD app for Jira integration, teams using Jira can now gain easy access and updates to Adobe XD prototypes and design specs directly within a Jira issue. This streamlines communication for developers, saving them precious time to spend on the issues at hand.
How to use the Jira integration for smoother developer workflows
After the integration is set up, you can simply share any prototype or design specs by copying a share link from Adobe XD and pasting this link into the new Adobe XD box found within any Jira issue. If you want some extra credit, you can share multiple design specs or prototypes in one issue. Hooray!
Now, everyone on your team will have the most up-to-date access to your designs and you can also instantly view which team members have interacted with the links. You’re also able to view artboards directly within Jira for a quick reference.
Bonus Tip: Use the Jira Software Cloud plugin to share to Jira without leaving XD
With the Jira Cloud plugin in XD, you are able to share assets and links directly to Jira issues without ever leaving the comfort of XD.
To export your assets to an issue, simply select the layers or artboards you want to add and choose the size, format, and optionally add a comment before clicking “Export”.
And when you want to share XD links, choose “Select Link” and a list of your existing share links will be available for you to select from. The assets and links will now be attached to the corresponding issues in Jira for your teams to engage with.
Dropbox Paper + Adobe XD
If your team is using Dropbox Paper for collaborative documentation, you’ll be happy to know that you can embed interactive prototypes directly within your document with the Adobe + Dropbox Paper integration. The prototype can sit anywhere inline with your content and is fully interactive.
How to use the Dropbox Paper integration for easy collaboration
Sharing your designs in Dropbox couldn’t be any simpler. Once you have your shared link, all you have to do is paste it into your desired Dropbox Paper document and the prototype appears like magic!
Because this link is saved in Adobe XD, updating happens automatically. Any time you update your design, those updates can also be seen in any Dropbox Paper documents where your design is embedded.
Zeplin + Adobe XD
Product teams working in Zeplin will love this! With the Zeplin + Adobe XD integration you can easily share your XD designs and specs to give your team the insights they need and provide comments. Once you export, your team will have access to the designs in an organized way, with all the assets and code snippets to make the development process more streamlined.
How to use the Zeplin integration for easy sharing of designs and specs
First, make sure you have the latest version of both Adobe XD and Zeplin open. Once they are both open, select the artboards you want to export, go to the ‘Export’ menu option and choose ‘Zeplin.’
When the Zeplin dialog box opens, you can choose which project to export to and your artboards will now load into Zeplin.
You can also export your XD components to Zeplin, letting your team quickly view components from within a design and connect them to your components in code, promoting reusability.
Using Adobe XD integrations to improve communication between your teams
In this blog post, we’ve discussed just a few of the many integrations Adobe XD has to offer. I hope, after reading this, you understand the value of these integrations and how they can help you achieve clearer communication and more efficiency within your teams and with other stakeholders.
Want to give these integrations a try? Browse through these featured Adobe XD integrations to find a solution that best fits your team’s workflow.
