Connecting JIRA and GitHub


JIRA offers excellent GitHub integration—how do you set it up?

By Stephan Schulze

At Project A, we often use the combination of JIRA and GitHub to organize and track our work.

JIRA offers excellent GitHub integration that allows direct access to commits and pull requests from within JIRA.

In your JIRA account, this is what it might look like in the development section of an issue:

Screenshot: The development section of an issue in JIRA

Clicking an entry in the development section will open an overview of the respective items, i.e., commits, branches, pull requests, and other things.

This useful feature only works, though, if you adhere to the following conventions:

  • Commits are linked automatically if the issue key is included in the commit message. (e.g., git commit -m “PROJECT-567 this is a test commit”)
  • Branches are linked automatically if the issue key is included in the branch name. (e.g., git branch “features/PROJECT-567”)
  • 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.
  • Builds and deployments are linked automatically if a commit involved in the build has the issue key in its commit message.

Follow these steps to connect your JIRA and GitHub accounts:

  1. Carry out the instructions provided here: “Connect JIRA Cloud to Github
    Be aware that JIRA can read all your repository data. So if you are part of more than one organization, I recommend creating a dedicated user for connecting JIRA and GitHub.
  2. Next, you will need to register your GitHub ClientID and ClientSecret in JIRA at https://[YOUR_JIRA_CLOUD_NAME]/secure/admin/ConfigureDvcsOrganizations!default.jspa

After a few minutes, your commits and pull requests will be directly attached to the corresponding issue.