I’m currently involved in a project that utilizes both GitLab and JIRA for our development processes. I’m exploring the available native connection between these two systems, particularly looking into the possibility of automatically generating new JIRA issues in response to certain events or triggers in GitLab.
While I’m aware that GitLab has certain integrated features for JIRA, I’m uncertain whether it supports the automatic creation of tickets. Has anyone managed to implement this kind of automation? I’m especially interested in generating JIRA tickets automatically under specific circumstances in GitLab, such as when pipelines fail or when merge request events occur.
Any insights on whether this feature exists in the standard integration, or if there are alternative solutions or tools that could facilitate this automation, would be greatly appreciated.
GitLab’s JIRA integration doesn’t create tickets automatically - I hit the same wall trying to fix our workflow. The built-in integration only links commits and merge requests to existing JIRA issues, won’t make new ones. But I found a couple workarounds. First option: set up GitLab issue templates with Zapier or similar tools. GitLab creates internal issues from pipeline events, then the automation service converts them to JIRA tickets. Second approach worked better for us - wrote a simple Python script using GitLab’s API and JIRA’s REST API. The script watches GitLab events and creates matching JIRA issues. Takes some setup time but you get the automation without paying for third-party services.
The built-in GitLab-JIRA integration won’t automatically create tickets for pipeline failures or merge request events. I’ve used this integration a lot - it’s mainly for referencing and updating existing JIRA issues through commit messages and merge requests, not making new ones. You can do this with GitLab webhooks plus custom scripts or middleware though. I’ve set this up before by creating webhooks that fire on specific events, then having a service process those webhooks and create JIRA tickets through the JIRA REST API. For pipeline failures, you can add job-level scripts that hit JIRA’s API when certain conditions happen. You could also use GitLab CI/CD variables and custom pipeline jobs that only run on failures. Takes some scripting but gives you full control over when and how tickets get created.
nope, gitlab’s native jira integration can’t auto-create tickets. it’s pretty limited - just updates existing ones when you reference them in commits. we ended up using gitlab’s webhook feature to trigger a lambda function that calls jira’s api whenever builds fail. bit of a hassle to set up but works well once configured.