Transferring Jira Tasks to GitHub issues: extended use case and steps

Keeping track of the internal projects at each stage of their development is important. That allows companies to monitor bugs and issues more closely and predict any possible slowdowns in production rollouts. The result is granular transparency, and it is critical for the availability and sustainability of the entire enterprise IT ecosystem.

To handle this, enterprises rely on sophisticated solutions like Jira and GitHub. Jira is one of the most sought-after DevOps systems. GitHub provides cloud hosting for software development and version control. Developers use it for bug tracking, feature requests, task management, and other critical for the health of the entire IT infrastructure operations. Additionally, connecting Jira to GitHub ensures the smooth integration of the GitHub workflow into the Jira Cloud. As a result, development teams easily monitor for any possible Jira issue warnings (including pull requests) that may come up, before the product reaches its final stage of production release.

The GitHub Jira integration ensures that the initial development process itself gets significantly enhanced allowing developers to come up with the right workflow solution they need.

What we'll discuss in the following lines?

• Why is there a need for a GitHub Jira integration?

• Possible ways to establish a JiraGitHub integration
• Things to consider when deciding on an integration solution
• What are ZigiOps integration platform and its most notable functionalities
• The most common GitHub Jira integration scenario
• Setting up the connection between Jira and GitHub with the ZigiOps no-code connector a step-by-step guide

Why choose the GitHub Jira integration?

The GitHub Jira integration ensures smooth collaboration between development teams and shortens the time for issue resolution. When Jira and GitHub applications are both used, often the teams need to transfer data between them, as both tools are closely related to the development process.

Jira GitHub integration helps align both Jira and GitHub DevOps workflows and operations. As a result, they are instantly optimized. Any tests and deployment actions are automated. The same is valid for the collaboration between the departments using GitHub and Jira. Keeping a close eye on any important Jira project makes it possible for development teams to do followups on their recurring internal iT operations and product development chain.

Build time, task assignment, and their progress monitoring and resolution happen easier again, thanks to the Jira GitHub integration. Its important to mention that upon integrating both applications, Jira and GitHub, finding and sorting out essential enterprise data comes effortless. The usual switching between the two systems (Jira and GitHub) is eliminated.

If the data is transferred manually between the Jira app and the Git cloud, companies may experience unexpected data leaks or errors, delays in communication, and even duplicated tasks. When we integrate Jira Software with GitHub, we will eliminate all of the above. Both Jira and GitHub teams will work in synchronization, ensuring every issue is resolved in a timely manner.

Ways to establish Jira GitHub integration

First option for establishing GitHub Jira integration

There is more than one way to achieve a seamless Jira to GitHub integration. One way is to directly connect a Jira to GitHub. It may seem easy, but oftentimes, this path of establishing a Jira GitHub integration is accompanied by unpredicted roadblocks. Some of them are the slowdowns in data digesting and analyzing poor data quality missing important details and miscommunications between teams.

Second option for integrating Jira with GitHub

Third-party solutions are the other option, like the ZigiOps connector. They provide fast and often enhanced Jira GitHub integration capabilities, which help easily scale the companys overall performance.

Sidenote: For the purpose of this Jira Github integration guide, well use ZigiOps and explore its functionalities.

How to choose the right GitHub Jira integration solution?

Integration tools play a major role in optimizing the performance of the different enterprise departments. Companies rely on them to minimize the possibility of errors or information gaps in any recurring tasks and operations. Also, the tool must always ensure the stability and availability of the transferred data. Such a solution is ZigiOps.

The ZigiOps platforms capabilities are:

• 100% no-code solution, meaning that its suitable for use even by a non-technical person

• It takes less than 10 minutes for the ZigiOps connector to establish the Jira GitHub connection
• Enhanced safety capabilities unlike most of the integration tools out there, ZigiOps does not store any of the data transferred back and forth between the connected GitHub and Jira systems
• It saves time by enabling the users to choose one of the many pre-built templates from its library, based on some of the most popular integration use cases. For specific use cases, ZigiOps provides users with the ability to build their integration template from scratch
• Does not require the installation of additional plugins or add-ons to function from either development team
• Provides enhanced scalability, flexibility, and availability to its users
• ZigiOps comes with a wide variety of advanced field mappings

A brief overview of the GitHub Jira integration

One of the most common GitHub Jira integration use cases is transferring Jira tasks as issues in GitHub. Lets say we have both Jira and GitHub in our tech stack. However, they are not connected, and the teams using them manually transfer data between the two. If connected, all of this will happen automatically. ZigiOps will automatically log any newly created Jira task as an issue in the GitHub system.

Also, ZigiOps will populate the extracted information from Jira in it, according to the pre-defined filtering that matches your specific use case. Since the integration tool establishes a two-way connection between the systems (Jira and GitHub), the updates will be bi-directional. If there is any change in GitHub, ZigiOps will instantly update the corresponding Jira task with the new information in real-time.

Any updates in Jira will show up in GitHub, too. Once the issue is resolved on GitHubs side, ZigiOps will automatically close the Jira task.

Initial setup of the Jira GitHub integration

The first step of the Jira GitHub integration is installing the ZigiOps no-code platform. This can happen either on your premises, VM, or the cloud within less than 15 minutes. We simply must click Install.

If you choose the ZigiOps cloud version, you can instantly log in through the available iPaaS portal. As for the on-premises installation, it will need just a few minutes to complete.

The fact that ZigiOps is a standalone solution saves plenty of time and resources as it does not require the installation and usage of any additional plugins or systems.

Logging into the ZigiOps system

When the integrations tool installation is finished, we can proceed by logging in to the ZigiOps system:

ZigiOps connector: log-in screen view

To log into the integration platform, we insert our credentials name, and password. Afterward, we are taken to the ZigiOps integrations if we have such. Once inside the ZigiOps, we see detailed information such as licenses, integrations, transactions between systems, etc.

ZigiOps connector UI: Health check status view of the connected systems, licenses, integration, and other information

Connecting to our GitHub instance

The first step to completing the Jira GitHub integration is to establish a connection between the desired systems. This happens from the Connected Systems menu. Once inside, we have to choose the systems and then enter our credentials for each one of them. Lets start with GitHub:

ZigiOps UI: Connecting to GitHub system credential fields such as user name, API key, url

To connect the ZigiOps platform with GitHub, we need to fill in the following:

• Server URL Input the URL of our GitHub instance. (https://api.github.com. as an example)
• Username Input the username of the GitHub integration user.
• API Key Input GitHubs API key for authentication against the GitHub API.

• Proxy Settings This is optional, and enables the usage of a proxy server.

ZigiOps will automatically perform a checkup of the connection with the GitHub system, once those details are filled in. The integration platform will instantly display if the connection with GitHub is a successful one. Once connected, the ZigiOps tool fetches the schema and some metadata from GitHub.

At a later stage of the GitHub Jira integration, the tool will load all available fields and display them making it easier to adjust the integration settings. This makes configuring the GitHub Jira integration straightforward.

Connecting to our Jira instance

In the current integration example, Jira is our second system (or the destination). Again, we must add it by clicking on the Add New System button. There, we can use the provided search bar to find it faster and eventually, add it as a second system wed like to connect GitHub with. Again, well have to fill in the credentials to make ZigiOps connect with it:

ZigiOps UI: Connecting to Jira Software credential fields such as user name, password, url

From the Connected Systems > Add New System > Jira and configure the following parameters:

• Server URL Input the URL of your instance. For example, https://jira.example.com.
• Username Input your username.
• Password Input the above users password (or the API Token).
• Proxy Settings Enables the usage of a proxy server (in case it is needed)

GitHub Jira integration configuration

ZigiOps Configurator menu offers two options for establishing the connection between Jira and GitHub the first one is by using one of ZigiOps out-of-the-box templates, and the second is by making a custom integration from scratch.

Once we click the Create custom integration button from the menu, the integration platform offers a guided setup. Well start by picking our target system GitHub. Next, its time to select the instance that we connected ZigiOps with earlier.

ZigiOps UI: GitHub Jira integration defining system 1 and system 2

The next move would be to define the specific entity we want to transfer. Thanks to the fact that ZigiOps dynamically reads the schema, we can simply choose the entity from the provided drop-down menu.

We also have to decide on the particular actions that we want the ZigiOps connector to perform whether to create or to update. In our case, the initial action we want to be performed is create since our use case is creating Jira tasks and logging them as GitHub issues.

Integration Action Items

ZigiOps provides the users with alarge number of actions that can be executed in no time. In our case they are:

• Creation of the Jira task
• Updating the Jira task
• Updating the GitHub issue whenever there are any changes in the corresponding Jira task

ZigiOps UI: GitHub Jira integration entities fields data

When creating the Jira task, ZigiOps allows us to set a trigger, trigger conditions, as well as to define the expressions all these functionalities intend to help us set all the proper conditions we need.

Additionally, the ZigiOps integration tool has comprehensive mappings which helps to additionally tailor the data we want to transfer from one of the systems to the other in detail.

ZigiOps UI: GitHub Jira integration GitHub issue trigger and trigger conditions fields

ZigiOps can automatically update the existing Jira task with any new changes that may occur. To accomplish this, ZigiOps will fetchthem and transfer them directly to the corresponding GitHub issue. Setting the updates happens easily and in a matter of seconds. From the available Field Map section we can easily do the mapping of the fields we think are important for our integration.

ZigiOps UI: GitHub Jira integration Jira tasks update mappings fields

Updating the GitHub issue

ZigiOps UI: GitHub Jira integration GitHub issue updates

If youre interested in seeing how the GitHub Jira integration it happens, feel free to book a demo.

Due to the fact that ZigiOps establishes a bi-directional Jira GitHub Integration, there is an option for us to synchronize updates from the GitHub issues with the corresponding Jira tasks.

ZigiOps UI: GitHub Jira integration GitHub issue updates field mappings values

Conclusion

Connecting Jira and GitHub has many benefits from keeping track on a projects progress to automating important operations and tasks that are usually carried out manually. Critical data silos and bottlenecks are eliminated, and companies can scale and enhance their performance.

Using a comprehensive integration solution like ZigiOps additionally enhances the capabilities of the two systems, removes communication blockages between their users, and acts as a basis for the accumulation of insightful data.

Book a free demo and see live how easy it is to integrate Jira and GitHub.

Side note:

You can check ZigiOps GitHub Jira integration page for more details on the connection between the systems.

Also, you can take a look at our documentation for the GitHub Jira integration to get acquainted with the specific technical requirements.