Jira development panel

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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 Jira Cloud, use the GitLab for Jira Cloud app developed and maintained by GitLab.
For Jira Data Center or Jira Server, use the Jira DVCS connector developed and maintained by Atlassian.

For an overview, see Jira development panel integration.

Feature availability

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	{check-circle} Yes	{check-circle} Yes
Sync merge requests	{check-circle} Yes	{check-circle} Yes
Sync branches	{check-circle} Yes	{check-circle} Yes
Sync commits	{check-circle} Yes	{check-circle} Yes
Sync existing data	{check-circle} Yes	{check-circle} Yes (see GitLab data synced to Jira)
Sync builds	{dotted-circle} No	{check-circle} Yes
Sync deployments	{dotted-circle} No	{check-circle} Yes
Sync feature flags	{dotted-circle} No	{check-circle} Yes
Sync interval	Up to 60 minutes	Real time
Delete branches	{dotted-circle} No	{check-circle} Yes
Create a merge request from a branch	{check-circle} Yes	{check-circle} Yes
Create a branch from a Jira issue	{dotted-circle} No	{check-circle} Yes

Connected projects in GitLab

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

For the GitLab for Jira Cloud app, linked GitLab groups or subgroups and their projects
For the Jira DVCS connector, linked GitLab groups, subgroups, or personal namespaces and their projects

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:

Introduced in GitLab 16.2 with a flag named jira_deployment_issue_keys. Enabled by default.
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:

Your project's .gitlab-ci.yml file contains the environment keyword.
A Jira issue ID is mentioned in certain parts of GitLab and a pipeline is triggered.

For more information, see environments and deployments.