The Jira integration encourages collaboration between product teams and the support team. The Jira v4 integration supports both Atlassian Jira Cloud (OnDemand), Jira Data Center, and Jira Server (OnPremise) version 7x and above.
Topics covered in this article:
- Installation requirements
- Installing and configuring the integration
- Restricting access to the Jira Cloud app
- Adding fields to the Jira app in Zendesk Support
- Using the dedicated integration user option
- Jira Server-specific instructions
Related topics:
- Using the Zendesk Support for Jira integration
- Zendesk Support for Jira related terminology
- Restricting access to projects in your Jira integration
- Updating a ticket when the status of a Jira issue changes
Installation requirements
You must have administrator permissions in both Jira and Zendesk Support to set up the integration.
Additionally, you must meet the following requirements:
- Be a member of the jira-administrators and jira-software-users groups
- Have no permission schemes that prevent you from creating or updating projects
- The reporter field is on the Create Issue screen for the respective projects
- Use the Jira Internal Directory as your user directory
-
Atlassian add-ons have permission to access your Jira projects. This is enabled by default. To verify this, check the Project Permissions page for each project in Jira. The various project actions should have a Project Role called
Project Role (atlassian-addons-project-access)
-
Third-party cookies are enabled. However, if third-party cookies need to remain disabled on your system, add
jiraplugin.zendesk.com
to the list of content exceptions
Installing and configuring the integration
The integration setup process involves installing the Zendesk Support for Jira app in Atlassian Marketplace from your Jira account, then configuring the app.
To install and configure the integration
- In Jira, click Apps in the top navigation bar, then select Find new apps.
- On the Marketplace apps page, search for Zendesk.
- Locate and click the Zendesk Support for Jira entry in the search results.
- Click Get app.
- Click Get it now.
- When the installation success notification modal appears, click Configure.
- Enter your Zendesk subdomain. By default, the Create a new dedicated Zendesk user for this integration checkbox is selected. We recommend using this feature to allow all escalations from Jira to Zendesk Support to not come from the admin who set up the integration, but from the dedicated user. This automatically creates a new admin user in your Zendesk account that is only used by the Jira integration. For more information, see Using the dedicated integration user option.
- Click Authenticate.
- A second browser page opens requesting to sign in to your Zendesk account. Enter your login credentials. The page will close.
- On the app's settings page, select the details to display in linked Jira issues.
- Click Save.
- If you are using Jira Cloud, you can check the integration works by adding the user
add_on_zendesk_for_jira
to the groupjira-users
in the Jira admin.
In Jira Cloud, the integration creates a free admin user called Zendesk for Jira. You can change the avatar of the user on the Profile page.
Restricting access to the Jira Cloud app
If you want to control who has access to the app, for example, admins or agents only, you can make the change in Zendesk.
To restrict access to the Jira Cloud app
- In Zendesk Support, click the Admin icon (
), then go to Apps > Manage and locate the Jira Cloud app.
- Hover over the Jira Cloud app. Using the drop-down menu on the right side of the app icon, select Change settings.
- Under Installation, select the Enable role restrictions? checkbox.
- Click in the Role restrictions text box, and select the roles that should have permission to use the app.
- Click Update to save and apply the changes to your settings.
That's it. Your teams can start collaborating using Zendesk and Jira. To find out how, see Using the Zendesk for Jira Cloud integration.
Adding fields to the Jira app in Zendesk Support
When creating a Jira issue from a Zendesk Support ticket, you're asked to enter details about the issue being reported, in the Create a new Jira issue form:
- Project
- Issue type
- Reporter
- Assignee
- Summary
- Description
These default fields cannot be removed. However, you can include additional fields from Jira in this form, either pre-existing fields, or custom fields.
For more information, see Specifying field behavior on the Atlassian website.
Configuring the issue creation form
You can define which Jira fields the agents sees when creating a new Jira issue from Support, a significant enhancement introduced in the Jira app v4.
These fields are specific to a particular Jira project and issue type. Issue fields defined as "required" in Jira will appear on the form regardless of configurations on this form.
Using the dedicated integration user option
If you choose to create a dedicated integration user in your Zendesk Support account, a new, verified admin user (Jira Integration
) is automatically created, along with an email address (jira_integration_XXXXXX@jira.zendesk-integrations.com
). This user account is fully managed by the integration and will be suspended if the integration is removed.
- The dedicated integration user option requires an available agent seat. While in use, that seat will not be available for other agents.
- The admin account who installed the Jira integration and the dedicated integration user must always have admin rights, and be active in order for the integration to function. If you suspend or downgrade the admin account or the dedicated integration user, the integration will not function.
After the authentication and creation processes are completed, the integration service is ready to use. All the commenting and field sync actions will be performed as if they’re done by the dedicated integration user.
If you decide to stop using the dedicated integration user, you can disconnect the integration from the Jira side. When disconnected, Jira will stop using the dedicated integration user. The dedicated integration user in Zendesk Support account will be downgraded to an end-user and suspended. Uninstalling the plugin will also downgrade and suspend the user.
To disconnect the dedicated integration user
- In Jira, click Jira settings, then go to Apps > Manage apps.
- Click to expand the Zendesk Support for Jira app, then click Configure.
- Click Disconnect to disconnect your subdomain.
- Re-enter your subdomain, and deselect the option to create a dedicated integration user.
- Click Authenticate to re-authenticate your subdomain.
Jira Server-specific instructions
- Ensure you allow Zendesk to establish a connection to your Jira server by creating an allowlist for the following:
- The IP addresses for your Zendesk account. For information on how to obtain them, see "Getting the IP addresses" in Configuring your firewall for use with Zendesk
- The Jira integration IP address range (Pod 19): 18.233.240.4/32, 35.171.179.180/32, and 54.88.153.44/32
- We strongly recommend that SSL encryption is used to secure the communication between Jira and Zendesk, especially for production environments. If SSL is enabled, you must have a full SSL certificate stack from a certificate authority. Self-signed certificates are not supported. The intermediate certificate is commonly not installed on the Jira server.
- Make sure that the right port is open (usually
80/8080/443
depending on your SSL settings) on your network for inbound/outbound traffic between Zendesk and Jira. - When configuring the add-on in Jira, the "Jira Base URL" may not be the same URL you use to access Jira on your private server. The Jira Base URL must be a publicly-accessible address, so Zendesk can use it to make network requests to your Jira instance. You can connect this publicly-accessible address to your private server address via NAT or reverse proxy.
- The Zendesk addon in Jira needs to run with administrative privileges. We suggest creating a dedicated account as follows and adding it to
jira-administrators
andjira-software-users
groups.Full name: Zendesk for Jira
Username: addon_zendesk
59 Comments
Hello,
Using the v3 integration, is it possible to link multiple Zendesk instances to a single JIRA Cloud instance? This seemed to be possible with v2, but I can't find a way to do it in v3.
Thanks!
@Zach you would need to search for the jira_escalated tag in Zendesk or label in JIRA
@Ricardo the cloud integration only supports 1 JIRA instance per Zendesk subdomain currently. I will submit your feedback to our product team.
@Jeremy thanks for the feedback, however in our case it's the other way around: we have 2 Zendesk instances and 1 JIRA instance. Is it possible to link them? Or is the link always 1:1?
@ricardo sorry I misunderstood, the same 1:1 rule applies. There can only be 1 Zendesk subdomain tied to 1 JIRA account. Multiple Zendesk accounts cannot be tied to the same JIRA instance.
Can the Zendesk API be used to update the integration app's status?
i.e. if an API call is used to create an issue in JIRA, could it then use zendesk's API to Link the JIRA issue to the Zendesk ticket? Or does a user have to manually click on the Link button and lookup/type the JIRA issue id in?
@zach there isn't an automated way to link a Zendesk ticket to a JIRA issue that has been created in JIRA. You will need to manually link the issue from within Zendesk.
We just went live with this integration and the feedback from our teams has been positive so far! However, when we link a ticket from the Zendesk side, the Jira ticket is updated with a 'jira-escalated' label. This is causing a lot of emails to be sent to people watching the ticket. Can this behaviour be disabled?
Thanks!
@Dan - The "jira-escalated" label is hard coded into the integration and can't be removed or disabled. My understanding is that any change to the jira issue will fire a notification. If there's a way to stop those notifications it will be on the jira side. I didn't see anything promising when I looked through the jira docs but that doesn't mean there isn't a solution. It might be worth reaching out on the Atlassian forums.
hey guys didnt was not able to see separate window as shown in step seven
Hi guys!
We have a JIRA On-Premise and we trying to configure the v3 of Zendesk for Jira add-on but on the JIRA side the add-on is not responding.
Do you know a way to troubleshoot this?
Hey @diego
Zendesk had an outage this morning that took down the integration. We got hit by it too :(
Seems to be back online now though.
Hi jiohealthhub support! Your browser may have blocked pop-ups from webpages. Have you tried repeating the steps above to get the add-on permissions browser pop-up? If you’re on Chrome, check the address bar for any blocked pop-ups.
I’m also creating a ticket for this so we can find out what’s going on. Please check your email inbox! ((smile))
We're using Confluence for our Internal Knowledge Base. Is there a way to use the Jira integration to include access to these articles?
Hi Jeremy,
Can you provide a bit more details about the use case you're looking to implement? Are you looking to link Confluence pages to tickets?
Thanks, Yuri!
That would be ideal. We've created several spaces in Confluence that we'd like to link in Zendesk for easy reference by our Team members. If the functionality allows, we would like to link new articles, or more FAQ-based references.
We have JIRA linked to our main Zendesk account however we're trying to link a second, separate Zendesk domain to the same JIRA account. Is that possible?
Hello,
When we try to configure the Zendesk app in Jira (step 5), the authentication screen doesn't pop and the add-on stops responding.
Do you know how to troubleshoot this issue? Thanks!
@Matej Have you got the JIRA Server version? Have you checked if the clock of the server is syncronized? You could try to sync with an NTP server.
@Diego, it turns out that the issues was caused by our old Zendesk instance that was still connected to Jira. We moved away from Zendesk and now we are implementing it again from scratch. Zendesk engineers need to fix it on the back end. Thanks!
Never mind, I just saw we're still running Jira 6.x.. that explains a lot.
-Sean
What is I have more than one zendesk support URL? and one is already setup on JIRA
Greg Pope & Santiago Moneta,
The new plugin does not support more than one Zendesk instance connecting to JIRA. We unfortunately discovered that this week.
I noticed that one of ZD field tags are copied into Jira as label, but others not. Where is setup of that? I don't want to tag Jira issues.
Just wondering if we can have the option to sort the Zendesk conversation the same whay as Jira Comments - ie oldest first?
@Yuri Mylis
We have been using ZD and Jira integration for a while and it works exactly the way we like it.
Our team will now be using another ZD instance and we would like to have multiple ZD instances to be connected to one Jira account for our devs (like the legacy integration).
I understand it's currently not possible directly and there are multiple tools available e.g. Azuqua or Zapier.
My question is: Do you guys have this solution in the pipeline? If so, is there any expected date?
Regards
@Ameet
There is a separate post that talks about this feature request. https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/204123876
We currently don't have plans to add this feature and the suggested solution is to use a multi-brand configuration.
Hi
We have been using the old ServiceRocket integration between our onpremis Jira and Zendesk.
We are now moving to a cloud based Jira and in that process we have updated the integration to Zendesk to this one.
Everything seems more solid and functional, however we are missing one thing that we had in the old integration: All comments being synced automatic.
I know that the notify option is what is intended for this - but this adds a manual step when adding a comment in Jira or Zendesk.
Is there any way of getting all comments synced automatic between Zendesk and Jira?
Hi Jakob B,
I have responded to you in a ticket: 2588792.
Thank you
Hi Phillip
Most excellent.
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