Airtable automation actions: Jira Cloud

As part of our ever-expanding list of Automations actions, we are happy to announce Jira Cloud automation actions. Users can now configure automation actions to either create or update an issue in Jira Cloud. If your organization uses Jira Server (On-Prem) then check out the documentation for those actions here. If you haven't already, we recommend checking out the support articles for both creating an automation and updating a record action for more information about setting up new automation workflows. 

If you or your IT team needs more information concerning OAuth scopes and the security relating to how we interact with Jira's API, then please check out the relevant section in this article.

Setup

Choose a trigger

As a prerequisite, you will need to have both an existing Jira Cloud account and a Jira Cloud instance. For either updating or creating a Jira Cloud issue, you will start the process by adding a new automation.

You’ll then need to set up the trigger that will tell the Automation when to run and which record to use to either update or create a Jira issue.

For this example, we’ll be using a table we created to keep track of user-submitted bugs. Our ideal workflow is when a new record enters our New Bugs view it will automatically create a Jira issue with the same information.

We will use the “When record enters a view” trigger to ensure that any record that enters this view will trigger our new Automation.

How to create a new Jira issue

After your trigger is configured and tested, you can start configuring your Jira Cloud action.

At this point, you’ll be prompted to select or connect your Jira account. Once your account is connected, the dropdown options for Site, Project, and Issue Type will be pre-populated based on your Jira account. For our example automation, we’ll use the “Bug” Issue type.

After this initial account configuration is set, you can then customize the details for the new Jira issue you’ll be creating. The fields you can customize include:

• Summary
• Description
• Labels
• Reporter (contingent on your Jira account permissions)
• Assignee (contingent on your Jira account permissions)
• Status
• Other Issue Data - The subfields listed under the “Other Issue Data” input will allow you to configure custom fields for the currently selected issue type.

For our bug tracking example, we set up the below configuration for our new Jira issue.

After configuring our action’s options, we’ll run a test to ensure everything is set up properly so far. You can see more information about the test, and your newly created Jira issue, by clicking on the arrow to the right of the test status.

Capturing the ID of a created Jira issue

A reference to the Jira Issue ID is necessary for the “Jira Cloud: Update issue” action. If you plan to create an automation to update Jira issues at any point in the future we strongly recommend creating a separate field on your table to keep track of the Jira Issue ID for any newly created Jira issues.

For our example, we know we want to save the newly created Jira issue ID so we will add one more action to this automation. The below action will update the record that initially kicked off this automation by capturing the returned ID for our new Jira issue in the “Jira Issue Id” field on the table.

Test and enable your automation

Turning on our automation and adding a new record to the table will now create a corresponding Jira issue and will update our record with the id of that issue.

How to update an existing Jira issue

Watch a 100-second walkthrough below.

In order to set up the “Jira Cloud Update Issue” action, you will need to have the Jira Issue IDs for the issues you are looking to update.

Here is the trigger we’ll be for this new automation using our previous bug tracking example.

We want to ensure that any updates to our table are reflected in the Jira issue we just made. Once the trigger is set up, we can create our “Jira: Update Issue” action. The initial configuration steps are very similar to the steps we took when creating a new Jira issue. You’ll need to select the Jira Account, Site, and Project you’d like to update.

Choosing an “Issue Type” for updating an existing Jira Issue is optional, but will give you access to any type-specific fields.
You’ll then need to enter the Jira Issue ID or Key that you’d like to update. This is where we will utilize the Jira Issue Id field we previously created on our example table.

Next, you can go about picking the fields you’d like to update on the Jira issue from the prefilled list.

Test and enable your automation

The last step, as always, is to test your new automation to ensure everything is configured correctly before turning your new automation on.

FAQs

What if I have Jira Server (self-hosted / on-site)?

Jira Server automation actions are covered in this support article.

Do the Jira automation actions support custom fields?

Yes, but only string (text), single select, and multiple select fields. Some types of custom fields, particularly those that come from plugins, may not be supported.

Can I use a Jira action to create sub-tasks in Jira?

Neither of our Jira Cloud actions support creating sub-tasks.

Can I use a Jira action to link Jira issues to one another?

We currently support linking an issue to a parent issue, but other types of issue links are not currently supported.

How do I use multiple JIRA sites?

To connect to another Jira site, you can select “Connect new account” from the account selection menu, and select the desired site as part of the authorization process.

How do I connect multiple Atlassian / Jira accounts?

This is a bit more complicated due to the Jira account authorization process. To add a second Jira account, you have to first log out of Atlassian in the same browser. Then, select “Connect new account” from the account selection menu and log in via the desired Atlassian account.

What happens to my automations if my Jira account gets deactivated?

If the Jira account for a related automation is deactivated or disconnected, then the automation will cease to work until a new Jira account is connected and configured.

Why are there no choices available for the “Reporter” dropdown?

The selected project and issue type in Jira does not allow the “Reporter” field to be set. More context from a Jira community post here.

Are attachment fields supported?

No. However, one workaround would be to use a custom text field for an attachment URL, so that the attachment can be accessed from or referenced in Airtable.