GitHub For Jira

About

Connect your GitHub code with your project management in Jira. A separate Jira subscription is required. With two of your most important tools connected, you'll spend less time managing projects and more time working on them. This integration is an open-source project, built and maintained by Atlassian.

Support

For general support inquiries and bug reports, please contact the Atlassian Support team. For feature requests, please create a new issue.

Table of Contents

• Install app
  • Requirements
  • Install from Jira Cloud site
  • Install from Atlassian Marketplace
  • Install from GitHub Marketplace
• Configure app
  • Connect your GitHub organization to Jira
  • Connect new GitHub repositories
• Manage app
  • Authorize
    • Jira permission scopes
    • GitHub permission scopes
      • Repository Permissions
      • Organization permissions
      • Events Our App Subscribes To
  • Manage Jira subscriptions
• Send data and use the integration
  • See GitHub development information in Jira
  • See Jira issues in GitHub
  • See GitHub builds and deployments in Jira
  • How the integration works
  • How the backfill works
• Migrate from the DVCS Connector
• Enterprise Features
  • IP Allow List
  • Known issues
    • Connecting GitHub organizations with SSO
• Need help?
• Contribute
• License

Install app

Requirements

This app officially supports GitHub.com (all editions including Enterprise) and Jira Cloud. Support for GitHub Enterprise Server and/or Jira server may be considered in the future.

Install from Jira Cloud site

This is the recommended approach to install the app into your Jira site and GitHub org.

1. Sign in to your Jira Cloud account.
2. From the top navigation bar in Jira, select Apps > Find new Apps. You can also click the Gear icon in the top-right corner and select Apps.
3. Search for GitHub for Jira and select Get app
4. When the app is installed, a flag will pop up in the top-right corner. Click Get Started to connect your GitHub account. If you missed this flag, click Configure integration from the Apps menu.

Next, you will need to configure the app.

Install from Atlassian Marketplace

1. Go to Atlassian Marketplace.
2. Sign in to your Atlassian account and click Get it now.
3. Select your site to install this app, click Install app.
4. You will be taken to the app listing on your Jira site, click Get app.
5. When the app is installed, a flag will pop up in the top-right corner. Click Get Started to connect your GitHub account. If you missed this flag, click Configure integration from the Apps menu.

Next, you will need to configure the app.

Install from GitHub Marketplace

1. Go to https://github.com/marketplace/jira-software-github.
2. Complete the (free) order for your GitHub Organization.
3. Choose which repositories you want to use with the Jira Integration on the installation settings screen, and click Install.
4. You will be directed to a setup page to select your Jira site.
5. Once installation completes you will be redirected to Atlassian Marketplace to install the GitHub for Jira app.
6. From there, follow the instructions above to install from Atlassian Marketplace.

Configure app

Connect your GitHub organization to Jira

As part of the installation flow, you should be directed to a GitHub configuration screen to configure your GitHub organizations in the Jira app.

⚠️ If you are not directed, navigate to the Apps page of your Jira instance and click Configure integration under the ”GitHub” heading. If you do not see this, click on Manage your apps and Get started under GitHub for Jira (only visible for Jira admins). This will bring you to the app's configuration screen.

Select Connect GitHub organization, then select either GitHub Cloud or GitHub Enterprise Server.

• If you select GitHub Cloud, you’ll be redirected to a page where you can connect to organizations in GitHub.

• If you select GitHub Enterprise Server, you’ll need to provide the URL for your server and create a GitHub app.

On the Connect a GitHub organization page, select the organization and repositories you'd like to connect.

⚠️ If you don’t see your organization click Install Jira on a new organization and follow the steps to install the app on GitHub and allow it permission to view your repositories. You can also manage existing connections or add additional organizations at any time on this same screen.

For detailed instructions on how to connect to Cloud or Server, read our support documentation.

Connect new GitHub repositories

If you originally gave the GitHub for Jira app access to "All repositories", and you've created a new repository on GitHub after configuration, your new repository will automatically work with the integration. However, if you installed the app on a subset of repositories, you will need to manually edit your repository selection by:

1. Sign in to your Jira Cloud account
2. From the top navigation bar in Jira, select Apps > Manage your apps - GitHub for Jira > Get started.
3. Select Configure next to the relevant GitHub organization and add the new repository you want the app to integrate with.

Manage app

Authorize

By granting the app access, you are providing the following authorizations to your GitHub and Jira accounts:

Jira permission scopes

Read, Write, and Admin for Development Information (branches, commits, and pull requests)

GitHub permission scopes

Repository Permissions

Organization permissions

Events Our App Subscribes To

Have more questions about permissions? Please see our FAQ documentation. If you can’t find the answer to a question, please feel free to open an issue and send your question to our team. We’ll be more than happy to answer and will update our FAQ doc accordingly.

Manage Jira subscriptions

Additionally, admins of an installation can view and delete GitHub subscriptions to other Jira instances, without having to log in to the Jira instance itself. This is useful if your installation is set up to send Development information to a Jira instance you no longer have access to, or to audit instances that other admins in your org may have previously configured.

To navigate to your Jira subscriptions

1. Click Connect GitHub organization.
2. Click the edit icon next to the organization.

ℹ️ This only gives you permission to delete the connection to Jira instances. To view development information in that Jira instance, you’ll need to be granted access in Jira.

Send data and use the integration

See GitHub development information in Jira

To start seeing your development information from GitHub in Jira, simply add a Jira issue key to your commit message, branch name, or PR title.

For example: the text [DEV-2095] will be sent through to Jira and appear in the Development Information section of the Jira issue with the key DEV-2095. Any branch, commit, pull request, build and deployment linked to this commit will now appear in Jira. You can find more information on how to reference issues in your development work here.

See Jira issues in GitHub

If an issue body contains a valid Jira issue key on your instance, the integration will automatically expand (unfurl) it into a reference link when surrounded in brackets []. For example: [DEV-2095] will be turned into a link to https://<your-instance>.atlassian.net/browse/DEV-2095.

This makes it so Jira issues can be linked inside a comment without it interrupting the flow of the comment as a whole.

Note: The square brackets are required, without which the pull request may appear in the Jira issue's Development section, but the issue key won't be expanded to a link.

See GitHub builds and deployments in Jira

GitHub Actions workflows and deployments will automatically be sent to your connected Jira instances so that they will be visible in Jira issues. If you’re setting this up for the first time, follow GitHub Actions Documentation - GitHub Docs. If you already have GitHub Actions and want to see CI/CD data from GitHub in Jira, include the Jira issue key in your commit message, branch name, or PR title.

Also see our guides for builds and deployments.

How the integration works

When a workflow (e.g. GitHub Action) or development event (e.g. pull request, commit, branch) runs, the app receives a webhook from GitHub. The app then extract the issue key from the respective branch/commit/PR and send this information to Jira.

How the backfill works

The app is designed to backfill historical data into Jira. Once you have installed and configured the app successfully, it will automatically trigger the backfilling process, for 6 months, for the allowed repositories to update Jira with historical information such as pull requests, deployments, branches, builds, and commits. Once the initial backfilling process is complete, you will be able to view the backfilled date and status on the user interface. All branches will be backfilled, regardless of their creation date. However, pull requests, deployments, builds, and commits will only be backfilled for the last six months. If you wish to pull more historical data in Jira, you may continue the backfill process for older dates by selecting 'Continue backfill' from the action menu. If the historical data is substantial, we recommend backfilling your data in 6 month segments, and continuing the process until you've reached the desired backfilled date.

The historical data that meets the following criteria will be available in Jira:

1. The backfilling process attempts to connect all branches that fulfill at least one of the following criteria:
   • The branch name contains the issue key.
   • The title of the latest pull request associated with the branch contains the issue key.
   • The last commit message of the branch contains the issue key.
2. All commits from the default branch will be backfilled. The commit message must contain the Jira issue key.
3. Only the latest 50 commits from non-default branches will be backfilled.
4. Unreachable commits (e.g. from deleted branches) will NOT be backfilled.
5. All pull requests, regardless of their statuses, will be backfilled. The Jira issue key should be included either in the title of the pull request, in the description of the pull request or in the name of the source branch of the pull request.
6. All the builds and deployments data will be backfilled that contain the issue keys. You can check how to include issue keys to the builds and deployments here.

If an error occurs during the backfilling process, the app will prompt you to retry the backfilling for the failed repositories without having to restart the entire backfill process. However, this does not account for permission errors. You will need to resolve any permissions errors before retrying the backfill process.

Migrate from the DVCS Connector

Existing users of Jira's built-in DVCS connector that meet the requirements should migrate to this integration. If you've not yet been prompted to do so, you can manually kick off the migration by:

1. Sign in to your Jira Cloud account.
2. From the left sidebar in Jira, select Jira Settings > Applications > DVCS accounts.
3. Follow the prompt to upgrade your GitHub connection.

Enterprise Features

IP Allow List

GitHub has the ability to limit who can communicate with your organization's GitHub API which we now fully support. To enable this feature or to debug any issues, please refer to our GitHub IP Allow List documentation.

Known issues

Connecting GitHub organizations with SSO

If a GitHub organization is protected with SAML, you might find its "Connect" button disabled. This may happen in a scenario when the user token (which GitHub for Jira app's UI is using) does not have permissions to access the protected org, because it was issued and saved to the app's session when the user didn't have an active SAML session in GitHub in the browser.

To workaround the problem, perform the following:

• create an active SAML session by going to https://github.com/organizations/<YOUR-ORG-NAME>/settings
  • that should initiate an auth process with your SSO identity provider
• in the same browser window, go to GitHub for Jira app and find the disabled "Connect" button for <YOUR-ORG-NAME> GitHub org
  • it must be located either on one of these pages
    • https://github.atlassian.com/github/configuration for GitHub cloud, or
    • https://github.atlassian.com/github/<UUID>/configuration for GitHub server enterprise
• insert resetGithubToken=true query parameter to the URL of the page in the browser and reload it
  • https://github.atlassian.com/github/configuration?resetGithubToken=true for GitHub cloud, or
  • https://github.atlassian.com/github/<UUID>/configuration?ghRedirect=to&resetGithubToken=true for GitHub server enterprise

After doing that, the token will be re-issued by GitHub with all necessary permissions and saved in the app's session, and "Connect" button should become enabled.

Need help?

Take a look through the troubleshooting steps in our support guide.

Contribute

Want to help improve the integration between GitHub and Jira? Check out the contributing docs to get involved.

License

The project is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.

When using the GitHub logos, be sure to follow the GitHub logo guidelines.