Link GitHub development information to Jira issues

Use issue keys to link development data to Jira issues

To link your GitHub development data to Jira, you must add a Jira issue key to your commit message, branch name, or PR title.

1. Find the issue key for the Jira issue you want to link to, for example “DEV-2095”. You can find the issue key on your issue’s card on your Jira board, or in the navigation on the issue detail page.

2. Check out a new branch in your repo, using the issue key in the branch name. For example, git checkout -b DEV-2095-<branch-name>.

3. When committing changes to your branch, use the issue key in your commit message. For example, git commit -m "DEV-2095 <summary of commit>".

4. When you create a pull request, use the issue key in the pull request title.

After you push your branch, you’ll see the pull request along with other development information in your Jira project.

If you use GitHub Actions, your workflows and deployments will be linked if a commit associated with the deploy contains the issue key in its commit message.

Read more about how to include issue keys in your development work

View GitHub development data in Jira

When your team adds Jira issue keys to GitHub branches, commits, and pull requests, you’ll see development data in the following places:

• On Jira issues - the development panel updates automatically to show linked branches, pull requests, commits, builds, and deployments.

• Your Jira board - issue cards display icons to indicate when there is a linked branch, pull request, commit, build, or deployment.

• The Code page - shows pull requests that have been linked to issues in your project within the last 30 days.

• In the Releases hub - linked pull requests, builds, and deployments are shown for all the issues in your version.

• In the deployments feature - the deployments timeline shows all the deployments linked to your issues. How to link GitHub workflows and deployments to Jira

• In JQL - you can search your project for issues that have commits, pull requests, builds, or deployments. For example, you could search for all the issues that are “Done” but have open pull requests. How to search using JQL

• In automations - you can automate your workflows to transition issues when activity happens in your GitHub repos. For example, you might create a rule to automatically move issues to “in progress” when a new branch is created. Explore DevOps automation triggers

Link to Jira issues in GitHub comments

To link to a Jira issue in a GitHub comment, add the Jira issue key in brackets. For example, adding [DEV-2095] to a comment in GitHub will automatically turn the issue key into a link to the Jira issue DEV-2095.