Watch, share and comment on a Jira work item

You'll often be working on Jira work items as part of a team, so it's important you can share what's happening to keep your team up to date. You'll also need to keep up with the progress of work items you may not be directly working on. This is where watching, sharing, and comments come in.

Watch work items

Watching means you receive notifications when things happen on a work item. For example, when someone comments on, edits, or transitions the work item, you'll be notified.

To watch a work item, open it and select the watch icon () in the details panel of the work item. If you have permission, the watch icon also lets you view and manage the list of watchers on the work item. Add watchers to make sure they're informed of important work item updates. More about permissions

Automatic watching

You can choose whether or not to automatically watch work items you comment on or update. You can go to Your profile and settings (), then Personal settings to see and set your Watch your work items preference.

Share work items

The easiest way to share a work item is by grabbing a link to it and sending it using your favorite messaging app or email. Open a work item you want to share and hover your pointer over the work item key in the top-left corner (ABC-123, for example). You'll see a small copy icon pop out, which you can click to copy the link to the work item.

Comment on work items

Comments can range from simple text updates to let watchers know what's happening on the work item, to code snippets, images, tables, and more. The editor converts things like links, code, and markdown on-the-fly, so you can paste in your content and let the editor do the work.

Press M on your keyboard to jump straight into the comment field and start typing.

Common markdown formatting options

• ## for H2 style (we support H2–H5)

• **bold** for bold

• *italic* for italic

• ``` for a code block

• [this is link text](www.atlassian.com) for this is link text

• * for bulleted lists, like this one

• 1. for numbered lists

• [] for action items

Mention your teammates

If you need someone to know about a comment, you can mention them in it. Type @ followed by their name, then choose the right person from the list. The person you mention will be notified about your comment and can quickly jump to the work item to see what's happening.

React to comments 😍

Sometimes there's nothing more to say than a 👍 or 🔥 to someone else's comment. You can quickly react using a popular set of emoji, or use the full emoji picker for a larger emotional range. 

Quickly reply with a Thumbs up (👍) or select Add reaction () below a comment to react, and let the commenter know what you feel.

Link to comments and work log entries

Save your team time and confusion by copying and pasting links to comments and work log entries.

To link to comments and work entries:

1. View a work item and hover over a comment.

2. From More actions (), select Copy link ().

3. Paste the link to your team.

4. From a work log entry, simply select Copy link to work log ()

Sort activity by newest or oldest first

You can read a work item starting from either its earliest activity or its latest. Depending on the type of work item, one of them might give you more context than the other, but you can switch between the two at any time.

To sort activity by newest or oldest first:

1. View a work item.

2. Scroll down to the Activity section.

3. Select Reverse sort direction.

Vote on work items

You can tell your team you think a work item is important by voting for it. The more votes a work item has, the more relative importance it has to your team. 

To vote on a work item, open it and select the vote icon at the top right. From there, you can also see the number of votes on the work item as well as who else has voted for it.