Jira development panel

Tier: Free, Premium, Ultimate Offering: GitLab.com, Self-managed, GitLab Dedicated

You can use the Jira development panel to view GitLab activity for a Jira issue directly in Jira. To set up the Jira development panel:

For an overview, see Jira development panel integration.

Feature availability

History
  • Ability to delete branches introduced in GitLab 17.1 with a flag named jira_connect_remove_branches. Disabled by default.
  • Ability to delete branches made generally available in GitLab 17.2. Feature flag jira_connect_remove_branches removed.

This table shows the features available with the Jira DVCS connector and the GitLab for Jira Cloud app:

Feature Jira DVCS connector GitLab for Jira Cloud app
Smart Commits Yes Yes
Sync merge requests Yes Yes
Sync branches Yes Yes
Sync commits Yes Yes
Sync existing data Yes Yes (see GitLab data synced to Jira)
Sync builds No Yes
Sync deployments No Yes
Sync feature flags No Yes
Sync interval Up to 60 minutes Real time
Delete branches No Yes
Create a merge request from a branch Yes Yes
Create a branch from a Jira issue No Yes

Connected projects in GitLab

The Jira development panel connects a Jira instance with all its projects to the following:

Information displayed in the development panel

You can view GitLab activity for a Jira issue in the Jira development panel by referring to the Jira issue by ID in GitLab. The information displayed in the development panel depends on where you mention the Jira issue ID in GitLab.

For the GitLab for Jira Cloud app, the following information is displayed.

GitLab: where you mention the Jira issue ID Jira development panel: what information is displayed
Merge request title or description Link to the merge request
Link to the deployment
Link to the pipeline through the merge request title
Link to the pipeline through the merge request description (introduced in GitLab 15.10)
Link to the branch (introduced in GitLab 15.11)
Reviewer information and approval status (introduced in GitLab 16.5)
Branch name Link to the branch
Link to the deployment
Commit message Link to the commit
Link to the deployment from up to 5,000 commits after the last successful deployment to the environment 1 2
Jira Smart Commit Custom comment, logged time, or workflow transition

Footnotes:

  1. Introduced in GitLab 16.2 with a flag named jira_deployment_issue_keys. Enabled by default.
  2. Generally available in GitLab 16.3. Feature flag jira_deployment_issue_keys removed.

Jira Smart Commits

Prerequisites:

  • You must have GitLab and Jira user accounts with the same email address or username.
  • The commands must be in the first line of the commit message.
  • The commit message must not span more than one line.

Jira Smart Commits are special commands to process a Jira issue. With these commands, you can use GitLab to:

  • Add a custom comment to a Jira issue.
  • Log time against a Jira issue.
  • Transition a Jira issue to any status defined in the project workflow.

Smart Commits must follow this syntax: 

<ISSUE_KEY> <ignored text> #<command> <optional command parameters>

You can execute one or more commands in a single commit.

Smart Commit syntax

Commands Syntax
Add a comment KEY-123 #comment Bug is fixed
Log time KEY-123 #time 2w 4d 10h 52m Tracking work time
Close an issue KEY-123 #close Closing issue
Log time and close an issue KEY-123 #time 2d 5h #close
Add a comment and transition to In-progress KEY-123 #comment Started working on the issue #in-progress

For more information about how Smart Commits work and what commands are available to use, see:

Jira deployments

You can use Jira deployments to track and visualize the progress of software releases directly in Jira.

GitLab sends information about your environments and deployments to Jira if:

For more information, see environments and deployments.