A tech company recently came to us with a pretty common challenge—they wanted to make sure all the important updates from GitHub issues were automatically syncing with their Jira work, and vice versa.
Their dev team was working in GitHub, while the project managers were in Jira. But both teams kept running into problems with status updates, comments, and other key info not showing up where they needed to.
Basically, they wanted both teams to stay in the loop, no matter which platform they were using. GitHub for Jira didn’t give them the level of flexibility they wanted, which prompted the system admin to reach out to us for assistance.
Our solution was to set up an integration that would keep everything in sync between GitHub and Jira, so both sides would always have the latest info and no updates would get lost in the shuffle.
What Jira to GitHub Integration Use Cases Are Possible?
Here are some scenarios where you can connect Jira Service Management (JSM), Jira Software, and other Jira products to GitHub.
Bidirectional synchronization of work item/issue statuses: Ensure that status updates are reflected across both platforms. For instance, when a GitHub issue is closed, the corresponding Jira work item is updated automatically, and vice versa.
Enhanced visibility of development activities: Link GitHub issues to JSM tickets for real-time visibility, helping support agents understand development context and improve customer interactions.
Sync task lists and assignees: Establish a two-way mapping between Jira Software and GitHub in order to fetch information about the user or issue/work. This will help users on both platforms to keep track of in-house and open-source contributions.
Custom field synchronization between JSM and GitHub: Sync custom fields (priority levels, labels, picklists, checkboxes, etc.) between JSM and GitHub to maintain consistency in issue (ticket) categorization and reporting across both platforms.
Sharing product change updates: Developers in GitHub can sync updates to Jira, allowing project managers to receive real-time information about code changes and more. Comments from Jira are also forwarded to developers in GitHub in real time.
How Exalate Handles Jira GitHub Issues Integration
Let’s check out how you can configure syncs between GitHub and Jira using Exalate.
To use Exalate, you must first install the app from our website or from the Atlassian Marketplace.
After installation, you can now set up the connection starting from either side. For this specific demonstration, I’ll start with Jira.
On the connection screen, click Create new connection. Then, enter the name and description of the connection for clarity. Go through the authentication process, then verify the connection details.
All done. Go to Open draft editor: This option allows changes when you click “Create a new version” or select the “Open latest draft”. This ensures you don’t modify the existing configuration accidentally.
Once active, click the “Edit” button to open the editor and adjust the Groovy sync rules. This lets you add custom data logic and mapping for complex or advanced use cases or workflows.
- Here, you can see two sets of rules: outgoing sync rules and incoming sync rules. This code snippet ensures that all synced issues will have the specified value (comment, description, attachment, etc.).
- Auto-generate the code with Exalate’s AI-powered chat feature called Aida, which you can use to configure both the incoming and outgoing sync rules. Suppose you want to sync issue statuses from GitHub with work statuses in Jira, input the following: “Map GitHub status ‘open’ to Jira’s ‘Open,’ and ‘closed’ to ‘Done’ in the GitHub incoming configuration.”
- After some time, Aida will generate the script based on your input, current configurations, and Exalate’s scripting API. Changes will be highlighted: red lines represent deletions, while green lines show new additions. You can choose to accept or reject these suggestions.
- Once satisfied, you can publish your changes. Once the changes have been saved, the sync will start operating automatically. You can also set up triggers to give you granular control over the sync based on specific conditions.
Conclusion
Using Exalate to connect Jira work items (tickets) and GitHub issues makes it possible to explore endless synchronization opportunities, including custom fields and advanced mappings.
This also helps developers and QA teams (or other teams using Jira) to stay in perfect sync during collaborations in order to share updates and process feedback in real time.
Want to connect your GitHub repo with your Jira instance? Reach out to us to get started right away.
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