Connecting Jira Software to compatible development tools provides your team with a range of functionality and information related to your development work.

Integration features

These are the features that become available when you connect Jira Software to the development tools listed below.

Boards can only be accessed by users with an active Jira Software license.

Development panel on issues

 The Development panel is shown on the View Issue screen in Jira Software. It summarizes developer activity: 

 For more information, see Viewing the development information for an issue.

Workflow triggers

Workflow triggers can help keep Jira Software issues synchronized with the information in your development tools – Fisheye/Crucible, Bitbucket, and GitHub.

Instead of relying on developers to manually update the status of an issue after creating branches, committing code, completing reviews, or merging pull requests, you can configure triggers in your workflow to automatically transition issues when these events occur in your development tools. For example, you could configure a trigger to automatically transition an issue from 'To Do' to 'In Progress' when a branch is created.

See Configuring workflow triggers for instructions on setting up workflow triggers.

Release Hub

The Release Hub shows the progress of a version, so you can determine which issues are likely to ship at a glance. The commits, builds, and (Bamboo) deployments related to each issue are shown, helping you to spot potential development issues that could cause problems for a release.

 

When you are ready, you can also release the version from the Release Hub. Doing this marks the version as complete, moves incomplete issues to other versions, and triggers release builds.

 

Read more about the Release Hub here: Checking the progress of a version

How it works

When development tools are integrated with Jira Software, a developer simply needs to supply an issue key for the issue to be automatically linked:

  • Commits are linked automatically if the issue key is included in the commit message.

  • Branches are linked automatically if the issue key is included in the branch name.

  • Pull requests are linked automatically if the issue key is included in the pull request's title or in the source branch name.

  • Reviews are linked automatically if the issue key is included in the title of the review, or if the issue is linked from the review.

  • Build linking depends on the tool:

    • Bamboo:  linked automatically if the issue key is included in the commit message.

    • Pipelines: linked automatically if the issue key is included in the branch name.

  • Deployments are linked automatically if a commit involved in the build has the issue key in its commit message. 

Note that the issue key must conform to the default Jira key format – that is, two or more uppercase letters ([A-Z][A-Z]+), followed by a hyphen and the issue number. For example, ABC-123.

When triggers are configured in the workflow for your project, particular events published by the developer tools automatically transition issues.

Some details:

  • Some users who can see data in the Development panel may not have permission to see the all the information in the details dialogs. This is because Jira Software checks for appropriate permissions in the linked applications.
  • The details dialogs (e.g. for commits) may display duplicates, although the number of unique items are reported at the top of the dialog and in the Development panel summary. Duplicate commits, for example, can arise from having Bitbucket Server and Fisheye linked to Jira Software, and Fisheye in turn connected with Bitbucket Server, so that Fisheye also reports commits.
  • If commits linked to the issue are involved with a Bamboo build that fails, the first successful build that follows will be reported, even though the original commits are no longer involved with that build.
  • The Development panel replaces the Source, Commits and Builds tabs, as well as the Deployment panel, in an issue. So, for example, you won't see the Source tab, and commits in Bitbucket Server will be accessible from the Development panel. However, if a connected application is older than the supported version, information from that application will continue to be displayed in those tabs rather than in the Development panel.

Connect Jira Software to development tools

Atlassian Cloud applications

If you use Jira Cloud, most applications that are part of your Cloud subscription, such as Confluence, are linked together automatically; you don't need to do anything to start using the development tool integration features. You do need to connect Jira Software to Bitbucket Cloud yourself.

Connect Jira Software to Bitbucket Cloud

You can connect your Jira Cloud instance to Bitbucket Cloud so that Jira issues automatically update to show recent branch, commit, pull request activity, builds, and deployments – see Connect Jira Cloud to Bitbucket.

Note that you won't see the Commits tab at the bottom of Jira issues any more.

Connect Jira Software to GitHub

You can connect your Jira Cloud instance to GitHub and GitHub Enterprise so that Jira issues automatically update as you work to show recent branch, commit and pull request activity – see Connect Jira Cloud to GitHub.

Note that you won't see the Commits tab at the bottom of Jira issues any more.

Link to Atlassian server applications

You can link your Jira Software Cloud instance to your own locally installed instances of the Atlassian development tools (Bitbucket Server, Bamboo, Fisheye or Crucible), by setting up application links. See Using AppLinks to link to other applications.

Your Atlassian server application must be accessible through port 80 (or port 443 with a valid SSL certificate) to connect with Jira Cloud. To achieve this, you may need to configure the server behind a reverse proxy – see these pages for more information:

To restrict public access to the server, consider limiting incoming connections to the published Atlassian Cloud IP addresses:; see IP address range used by Atlassian Cloud.

Note that there are some limitations when you use Jira Cloud with Atlassian server applications:

  • The activity stream feeds do not appear on the Activity tab in Jira Cloud.
  • You cannot delegate the server user and group management to Jira Cloud.

Development tools configuration for a project

The Development Tools section of the administration screen for a project gives you an overview of the development tools that are connected to your Jira Software instance, and of the users who can use the integrations between Jira and those tools. Users must have access to the Jira Software application to be able to see the Development panel. Anonymous users (those who are not logged in) and users without explicit Jira Software application access do not see the panel. 

View Permission

The View Permission section lists the user groups that can see the Development panel in a Jira Software issue. The Development panel displays the Create Branch link and summary information for your development process, such as the number and status of the related commits, pull requests, reviews and builds. The visibility of the panel is controlled by the "View Development Tools" project permission.

Applications

The Applications section lists the development tools that are integrated with Jira Software.

Supported versions

We recommend that you use the latest version of each application. Here's the minimum development tool version required for integrating with Jira Software:

  • Fisheye/Crucible: version 3.3+
  • Bamboo: version 5.4+
  • Bitbucket: either the current cloud version or server version 4.0+ (Stash version 2.10+)
  • GitHub: the current cloud version
  • GitHub Enterprise: version 11.10.290+

Troubleshooting

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