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Using the Zendesk Support for Jira integration

Yuri Mylis
  • Edited
Zendesk Product Manager

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The Jira integration encourages collaboration between product teams and the support team. For example, after a customer reports a bug in a ticket, the agent can file a bug in Jira directly from your Zendesk. After fixing the bug, a developer can add a comment to the ticket directly from Jira.

For information on configuring the Zendesk Support for Jira integration, see Setting up Zendesk Support for Jira integration.

This article covers the following topics:

Related articles:

Using the integration in Zendesk Support

As an agent, you can create a new Jira issue from a ticket, or link to an existing Jira issue from a ticket. You can then use the link to track the progress made by the product team on addressing the issue. For example, within Zendesk Support you can view details about a bug you filed in Jira to see if the engineering team fixed it.

Topics covered in this section:

You can also automatically notify an agent or a customer when somebody changes the status of an issue in Jira. See Updating a ticket when the status of a Jira issue changes.

Integration limitation

A single Jira issue can link to up to 200 Zendesk Support tickets.

Creating a Jira issue from a ticket

  1. In Zendesk Support, go to the ticket you want to use as a basis for a new Jira issue.

    For example, the ticket could be a feature request or a bug report from a customer.

  2. Click Create Issue in the Jira app next to the ticket.

    Note: If the Jira app is not displayed on the right side of the agent interface, click Apps.

  3. Click in the Project text box to display available Jira projects. If you start typing the name of the Jira project for the issue, the list of suggested projects is filtered to match.

  4. Enter the details about the issue.

    • If you’ve selected the option to transfer information from your ticket, this information is already entered.

    • You can click Copy fields from this ticket (see below) to populate the fields, then select the Always copy checkbox to make this the default behavior.

      Note that Copy fields from this ticket only copies the subject and most recent comment. It does not copy any additional custom fields.

    • If the assignee or reporter you're looking for doesn't appear in the suggested user list, enter the exact Jira username.

    The default fields are displayed in the image below. Administrators can add additional fields this form. For information, see Adding fields to the Jira app in Zendesk Support.

  5. (Optional) Click Add reporter as a watcher to include the reporter as a watcher to the newly-created issue. See Commenting and comment sharing for more information.
  6. Click Create issue.

A new issue is created in Jira and the ticket is linked to it. In Zendesk Support, the Jira app in the sidebar displays the Jira issue name, summary, and description.

For more information, see Customizing the summary and details views.

Creating a link to an existing Jira issue from a ticket

If you know that an issue is tracked in Jira and you receive a support request that's related to it, you can link the ticket to the issue. You can also link the same ticket to other issues in Jira.

You can keep track of the number of tickets linked to Jira issues, and use that metadata to prioritize your work. See Jira: Linked tickets reporting for more information.

To link to an existing Jira issue

  1. In Zendesk, go to the ticket you'd like to link to a Jira issue.
  2. Click Link Issue in the Jira panel.

    Note: If the Jira app is not displayed on the right side of the agent interface, click Apps.

  3. Enter your issue key (XXX-000) or paste a link to the issue.

    If you do not know your issue key, you can search Jira issues.

  4. Click Link issue.

The ticket is linked to the existing issue in Jira. In Zendesk Support, the Jira app in the sidebar displays the Jira issue name, summary, description, and comments.

Tracking a Jira issue from a ticket

The Jira app in the sidebar displays a summary of any issue linked to the ticket, as well as any comments associated with it:

Click the Show More Details (eye) icon next to the issue name to view more details about the issue:

The details view opens in a new window:

You can customize the information displayed in both the summary and details views. See Customizing the summary and details views below.

If you're a Jira user too, you can open the issue in Jira by clicking the issue name in the summary view. A new browser tab opens and displays the issue.

Customizing the summary and details views

You can customize the information that's displayed in both the summary and details views. For details about the views, see Tracking a Jira issue from a ticket above.

To customize the summary and details views

  1. Click the Admin icon in the upper-right side of the Jira app next to the ticket.

  2. Select the information you want to display in the summary and details views.

  3. Click Close to save your choices.

Adding a label to a Jira issue from a ticket

When creating or linking to a Jira issue from a ticket, a jira_escalate tag is added by default to the ticket and an identical jira_escalate label is added to the issue in Jira. You can add more labels to a linked issue in Jira at any time. Any ticket tag with a jira_ prefix is added as a matching label to any Jira issue linked to the ticket.

If the escalating agent has a custom agent role in the Enterprise plan, the role must allow the agent to edit tags. See Custom agent roles (Enterprise).

To add a label to a Jira issue

  1. Add a tag with a jira_ prefix in the Tags field in the ticket's left sidebar:

  2. Update the ticket by clicking Submit.

The new label appears in the Details section of the issue in Jira:

Unlinking a Jira issue from a ticket

  • Click the Unlink (x) icon in the Jira app next to the ticket.

Searching Jira issues

When linking a ticket to a Jira issue, you can search for Jira issues by keyword, or using the Jira Query Language (JQL). Starting your search with the project name in capital letters will limit the results to that project.

To search Jira issues by keyword

  1. In the Link Issue pane, enter your search terms in the search box. You can limit results to a specific project by starting the search with the project name in capital letters, or you can use JQL.

  2. As you're typing, ticket suggestions are made. You can select a suggested ticket, or continue typing to narrow down the results.

Using the integration in Jira

As a Jira user, you can view details about tickets linked to your issues, and add comments to linked tickets. You can also automatically notify an agent or a customer when you change the status of an issue in Jira. See Updating a ticket when the status of a Jira issue changes.

This section describes how to view the details of a linked Support ticket in your Jira issue. For information on adding comments to linked tickets, see Commenting and comment sharing below.

To view the details of a linked Zendesk Support ticket

  1. Navigate to the issue in Jira. In the sidebar under ZENDESK SUPPORT, the number of linked tickets is displayed.

  2. Double-click on Linked Tickets to open the linked tickets page.
  3. If more than one ticket is linked to the issue, click the angle bracket to expand the ticket details.

  4. To view more details about the ticket, click the Zendesk Support ticket link in the sidebar:

     

Commenting and comment sharing

When you link Zendesk Support tickets and Jira issues, you can also share some commenting functionality between the two platforms.

While the commenting functionality doesn't fully integrate the commenting systems in Zendesk Support and Jira, it does allow you to perform the following tasks, which are described in this section:

However, you cannot perform some expected comment-related tasks, such as:

  • Automatically notify Zendesk collaborators when there are new comments on linked Jira issue, unless they are also watching the Jira issue.
  • Mark a comment as having been read by another user.

Adding a comment to a Jira issue from a ticket

If a Support ticket is linked to a Jira issue, you can add comments to the Jira issue from the ticket. This is useful for providing additional information from customers to the product team.

Both public and private comments added to a Support ticket are shared with any connected Jira issues.

To add a comment to a Jira issue

  1. Click the Notify button in the Jira app next to the ticket.
  2. Enter the comment you want to add to the issue in Jira.

  3. To save typing, you can transfer the last comment made on the ticket by clicking Copy the last comment.
  4. Any attachments in ticket comments are shown under Attachments. Click on the attachment to add it to the note.
  5. Click Notify issues. The note and added attachments are shown in the Jira issue under the Comments tab.

The comment is added to the Activity section in Jira, under the Comments tab:

Adding a comment to linked Zendesk Support tickets from a Jira issue

You can notify a Zendesk agent or a customer when you add a comment to the linked Jira issue.

When you add a comment to a Jira issue, it adds that comment to the linked Support ticket. When the comment is added to the Zendesk ticket, an email containing your comment is sent to the agent and any other agent who is copied on the Support ticket. If the comment is public, an email is also sent to the customer who submitted the ticket and any other end user who is copied on the ticket. Be mindful that a customer will read your message when you add a public comment. If in doubt, leave the comment private.

You can comment on a single linked ticket, or all linked tickets if you have multiple tickets linked to an issue. Commenting on all linked tickets can be performed in the sidebar or the Activity section of a Jira issue.

To add a comment to a linked ticket

  1. Navigate to the Jira issue, and in the Activity drop-down list, select Zendesk Support.

  2. In the Ticket drop-down list, select the Support ticket.

  3. Enter your comment . Select the Make public reply checkbox to make a public comment.
  4. Click Add comment.

     

To add a comment to all linked tickets in the Activity section

  1. Navigate to the linked issue in Jira, and in the Activity drop-down list, select Zendesk Support.
  2. Enter your comment, select the Add for all tickets checkbox, and click Save.

To add a comment to all linked tickets in the sidebar

  1. In the sidebar under ZENDESK SUPPORT, double-click on Linked Tickets. The linked ticket page opens.

  2. Click Add comments to linked tickets, which opens a page.
  3. Enter your comment and click Send.

To make all comments private

  1. Open the add-on configuration page in Jira by selecting the Settings cog icon Apps > Manage apps > Manage Add-ons, then selecting Zendesk Support for Jira > Configure.
  2. In the Settings > Other options section, select the Disable all public comments to Zendesk checkbox.
  3. Click Save.

Notifying Jira issue watchers when there are new comments on linked Zendesk tickets

Jira users who are watching a Jira issue linked to a Zendesk ticket, will receive a notification email from Jira for any comments added to the linked ticket(s).

To enable comment notifications

  1. In Jira, go to the Settings cog icon > Apps > Manage Apps > Zendesk Support for Jira > Configure to open the configuration page.
  2. In the Settings > Other options section, select the Send email notification to Jira issue watchers on new linked Zendesk Support ticket comments checkbox.
  3. Click Save.

Adding the reporter as a watcher when creating a new Jira issue

When creating a new Jira issue from a Support ticket, or when linking a ticket to an existing issue, you can add the reporter as a watcher to the newly-created issue.

Jira also allows you to watch an issue. When you watch an issue, you receive email notifications when certain updates are made. Depending on how your issue notifications are configured, you may receive an email when:

  • The story has been updated (such as the description)

  • The status changes (assigned, closed)

  • A comment is submitted

To add a reporter as a watcher

  • When creating a Jira issue from a Zendesk Support ticket, select the Add reporter as a watcher checkbox.

Adding the current agent as a watcher when linking Jira issues

When linking an existing issue to a ticket in Support, the current user is added as a watcher to that issue in Jira. Note that for this to be successful, the Jira user profile must contain the Zendesk agent's email or full name.

Displaying when the most recent comment was added

In the Zendesk Support panel in Jira, you can display how much time has elapsed since the last comment was added to the ticket in Zendesk:

To enable the last comment added display

  1. In Jira, go to the Settings cog icon > Apps > Manage Apps > Zendesk Support for Jira > Configure to open the configuration page.
  2. In the Settings > Zendesk Support ticket fields section, select the Last Commented checkbox:

  3. Click Save.
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360 Comments

  • Gentry Geissler
    Zendesk team member

    Hi Zorah,

    I think this request could end up being a little complicated to explain so I will pull this one into a ticket for us to discuss further. It should be possible with the way the JIRA integration works, but it will be dependent on your workflows. Keep an eye out for that email!

    0
  • Gentry Geissler
    Zendesk team member

    @Peter 

    You may want to review the document https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115004257108-Using-the-Jira-field-syncing-feature

    if you haven't already, also taking a look at the requirements and limitations.

    0
  • Mack Wong

    When we select certain projects, Issue Type drop down menu shows "Search failed..." and we cannot create Jira ticket for those projects. 

    Checked that the account we used to setup integration has admin rights and sufficient rights to create issues in those projects on Jira. What are the possible root causes that make it stops working? How should we trouble shoot this issue?

    0
  • David Gillespie
    Zendesk Product Manager

    Hi Mack,

    Thanks for bringing this to our attention, I've raised a support ticket so our teams can look into this.

    David

    0
  • Wilfred Kaw

    Hi Mack,

    There could be a couple of factors that may be affecting the ability to search for an issue. First thing to check whether you have any project restrictions set within your configuration which is found via: Setup (COG icon) > Add-ons > Zendesk > Manage > Configure > Project Restrictions. If there are some set here that link up with the one's that won't allow you to view any linked issues, bring them over to the Allow Projects column temporarily to confirm whether they reappear after a refresh. If not, I would recommend disconnecting and re-connecting your integration within the Zendesk add-on which is found under the same section (Setup (COG icon) > Add-ons > Zendesk > Manage > Configure >) but within 'Settings'.

    Let me know, how you go.

    Thanks!

     

    0
  • Shanta Nathwani

    We've been using Zendesk for about a year and have been using the Jira integration nicely. Having the ability to sync Issue Id's in Zendesk for reporting is great. I've just added that syncing to the field that I've been manually updating as we go, which is a text field. I realize that the field will not update unless the Zendesk ticket is updated. I just updated one, the field was blank, and it didn't update. Thoughts?

    0
  • Jake Gulick

    Any update on sending the attachments from tickets when created in zendesk to jira instead of a public link? Being in healthcare we can't have these be just a link.  I am still surprised this very requested feature has not been completed. Is it not technically possible?

    0
  • David Gillespie
    Zendesk Product Manager

    Hi Shanta - are you able to provide some more context behind your problem? Which fields were you updating and what were they being updated from & to?

    Hi Jake - there has been a lot of feedback on having secure attachments available between the two systems. We've taken note of this and have added this as a priority item to our backlog. Unfortunately I can't provide a confirmed date yet but will update this feed when we have one.

    0
  • Shanta Nathwani

    I was using the advice from @Gentry above: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115004257108-Using-the-Jira-field-syncing-feature

    I'm attempting to send the Jira key to Zendesk. I've set this last field up recently: 

    I have that field in Zendesk as a text field:

     

    The article above describes that the tickets won't update automatically, but that the field would update if the Zendesk ticket is updated. I've done this for a few tickets, but the Jira Key field in Zendesk is not populating with the key from Jira. 

    0
  • Anna Roussanova

    Hi Shanta, I created a ticket for this issue! I'll get back to you with more details in there :)

    0
  • Morgan Imel

    Hi all! We want Zendesk priority to be used in our Jira issue prioritization process. Ticket priority is visible on a Jira issue, however, it's not very accessible at all.

    To see the Zendesk priorities in Jira, you first have to click "Zendesk Support" and then open every ticket card to see the priority of each ticket (in Jira's "new issue view"). See image:

    This is too much work for a product manager to do when assigning priority to a Jira issue so we are looking for a way to map the "highest priority" of all of the tickets to a custom field in Jira.

    I've messed around with the field mapping functionality, but if I map priority to a custom field, the value continues to get overwritten each time a new ticket is added. So if I link a high priority ticket to a Jira issue then link a low priority ticket, then the field in Jira would only say "low".

    Does anyone have a solution for this? We will probably end up writing a script to do this via the API if there isn't a native solution. Thanks!

    0
  • Garrick Rohm

    Hi Morgan,

    Yep, we'd recommend aggregating these customer tickets as incident tickets linked to single problem ticket as described here: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203691086-Working-with-problem-and-incident-tickets

    Then, simply link the Problem Ticket to the corresponding JIRA issue instead, set its priority appropriately, and field sync that over to a custom field in JIRA. 

    0
  • Morgan Imel

    Thanks for the speedy response Garrick! We don't currently use problem tickets and I think that would be a lot of overhead for us right now. We'll look into using the API!

    0
  • Ricardo Alfaro

    Jira is moving to a new issue view and the notify button is not displaying on that view. We can switch back to the old view in Jira for now, but I suspect that will be short lived. Is this something that you will be working with Atlassian on to update before the new issue view becomes the only way to view Jira issues? 

    If not, then we will not be able to post comments to Zendesk tickets from Jira once the old issue view is deprecated.

    0
  • Ricardo Alfaro

    Nevermind. There is an extra click now to view more details of add-ons. You have to click the "open Zendesk Support" link to see the notify button now. 

    It didn't look like a button because before you click on it, it is not highlighted or have the arrow next to it. One extra click now, but still works. 

    0
  • David Gillespie
    Zendesk Product Manager

    Hi Ricardo,

    Thanks for your feedback. We have just kicked off the design work to update the UI on the Jira side of the integration.

    We're looking to move to align with the new Jira Issue design and improve some of the functionality. More updates to come soon!

    Thanks,

    David

    0
  • Shannon Brown

    Zendesk team, the failure to support a one JIRA to many Zendesk instance use case is a major limitation for the Enterprise customer. The push to third party solutions for this carry the same risk/cost as the original ServiceRocket version, where the third party drops support after a huge time and money investment to get it working. If the future business of Enterprise level customers matters to you, I strongly urge that you find a way to get this back onto your roadmap. Thanks.

    1
  • David Gillespie
    Zendesk Product Manager

    Hi Shannon,

    Thanks for the feedback. We've had this request from a number of customers so it is high on our to-do list.

    Thanks,

    David

    0
  • Shannon Brown

    Thanks, David. Anything you can do to accelerate this is greatly appreciated. With Azuqua dropping support for their integration, the need is urgent. 

    0
  • Jimmy Rufo

    @Yuri - Are there plans to be able to @ someone on the JIRA side, via the notify JIRA feature?  Right now, we can't use any JIRA markdown within the JIRA notify box in Zendesk, which causes some limitations in the two way communication.  Thanks.

    0
  • David Gillespie
    Zendesk Product Manager

    Hi Jimmy,

    Thanks for the feature suggestion. We currently don't have this on our roadmap but will update this thread if anything changes.

    Thanks,

    David

    0
  • Sofia Strasberg

    Hi there, I would need to make a report with the # of tickets linked to a Jira Card, and its status. Is it possible?

    0
  • Dan Ross
    Community Moderator

    Hi Sofia,

    The best way to do this report is within JIRA itself, there's no means to access the # of linked tickets from Insights or Explore, unfortunately.

     

    0
  • David Gillespie
    Zendesk Product Manager

    Hi Sofia, 

    This might also be helpful too: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/227745787-Jira-Linked-tickets-reporting

    Thanks,

    David

    0
  • Jon F
    • Edited

    Is there going to be a time when the Zendesk-JIRA integration, "JIRA" app, authored by Zendesk, works with multiple JIRA instances?  As of now in v4.0, the integration only supports a single JIRA instance, as seen in these comments: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203660206/comments/360000339867 and https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360002352307-New-Feature-Request-Link-to-multiple-JIRA-instances

    We have two JIRA instances.  We know that there is at least one alternative application that allow adding another JIRA instance to Zendesk to bypass the one JIRA instance only limitation that the existing app created by the Zendesk team contains, to allow for getting another instance to connect to have Zendesk-JIRA integration.  However, all the alternative apps are pricey, about 40 cents per ticket created after the "Free" trial expires.  However all of the alternative app options, including the "IntegrateCloud Zendesk-JIRA Integration" app,  appear to be pay per use and can get very expensive for us when we have the need to link to and create an average of 10 Zendesk tickets to JIRA issues daily x .40 cents x 30 days = $120 USD per month, this is about what we pay for our entire monthly Zendesk subscription.  Even though the app in this particular app in the Zendesk Marketplace is shown as "Price: Free", it is only free to install but it is still pay to use after the first 20 tickets are created, it would cost about 40 cents per ticket creation if we were to start actively using this alternative app, in addition adding comments via the "Notify" feature are charged per comment added.  As seen on their Support FAQ page here (https://integratecloud.azuredesk.co/SupportHome/Index.aspx) mentioned in the "What is a transaction?" section:

    If you create a ticket in Zendesk and send it to JIRA that is considered as 1 transaction. Now when you add some comments in JIRA for linked ticket and send back to Zendesk its considered as 1 transaction. So total 2 transactions. Every time integratecloud sync comments or any piece of information from Zendesk to JIRA or Vice Versa that will be considered as transaction.

    I see the big downside to the "IntegrateCloud Zendesk-JIRA Integration" app in the Zendesk Marketplace is that it looks like this "Free" version is not free, only "Free for 20 tickets", and will expire after 20 ticket creations. The software author replied with the "Free for 20 tickets" comment seen in another Zendesk Help Center forum response. Once the "IntegrateCloud Zendesk-JIRA Integration" app times out it will cease to work and require a license and using their Price Calculator it would incur or estimate to be a 40 cents per ticket creation / linked ticket / new comment charge.

    In addition, compared to the "JIRA" (Zendesk Support for JIRA) app, available in the Zendesk Marketplace, authored by Zendesk, that app is less buggy compared to the alternative apps that we have tried that support Zendesk-JIRA integration.  We also do not like that we have to install, maintain, and have end-users utilize two different apps in their Zendesk ticket view just to allow the two different JIRA instances to work, and one app has a completely different UI compared to the other app, and in this case the alternative apps are somewhat buggy and somewhat less feature rich compared to the one authored by Zendesk.  The main issue I have would be the cost in using an alternative Zendesk-JIRA app, we pay enough for our Zendesk and JIRA subscription to begin with to have to worry about a 40 cents cost per new or linked ticket and per comment fee (transactions) just so that we can have one more JIRA instance tied to our Zendesk.

    Thank you.

    0
  • David Hall
    Zendesk Product Manager

    Hi Jon,

    Thank you for the feedback.  We've heard from a number of customers that being able to link with multiple Jira instances would be useful, and it's something we're considering.

    I take your point about the pricing information on the App Marketplace not being as transparent as it could be.  I'll pass that on to the team that looks after that area.

    Thanks,

    David

    0
  • Lorena Delos Santos

    Is this Jira app going to be supported for v2 of Zendesk? I'm confused because I guess there's another app called "Jira Legacy" and I'm hoping that this app is not the legacy app.

    0
  • Yuri Mylis
    Zendesk Product Manager

    @Lorena the current Jira app is v2, no need to be concerned. 

    1
  • Fidesic Support

    Is it possible to disable the Reporter and Assignee fields on the create issue window? I don't want my support agents to set the assignee. I can override this with an automation rule in jira but it takes up time and distracts from fields that actually matter

    0
  • Stephanie Sjostrom

    I'm just setting up the integration now and one of the items we want copied from Zendesk is the organisation. I saw under the app settings is the option to show the organisation in the ticket fields however it has not been displayed in any of the Jira tickets I have created through the integration. Organisation also isn't an option in the field mapping configuration.

    How can I display the organisation from Zendesk in Jira?

     

    0

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