Connect Jira With Help Scout to Link Conversations and Issues

Jira helps you track and resolve bugs and other issues with powerful workflows, planning features, and comprehensive search — giving your team full control of the end-to-end development of your products. Our integration allows you to link Jira issues with conversations right from Help Scout, and you can quickly see previously linked Jira issues in Help Scout, as well as seeing the linked conversations in Jira. 

Overview

The Help Scout Jira integration helps keep your support team in touch with product development and bug reporting by creating easy access to Jira issues right from the conversation sidebar in Help Scout. 

Activation Instructions

1

If you're using Jira Cloud, you must authenticate the integration using your Jira administrator username and API token. You can create an API token following these steps from Jira.

Jira Server (on-premise) users can authenticate using your Jira username and password. If your Jira Server installation is behind a firewall, give us a shout to request the IP addresses you'll need to allow through.

2

In Help Scout, head to Manage > Apps, and search for or scroll to the Jira Software integration. 

3

Click on Install App, then enter your Jira Base URL (e.g. yourcompany.atlassian.net), your Jira Username (must be a Jira administrator), and the Jira API token. The Jira account you use to authenticate here must have permissions to create and edit issues and modify the reporter for each project.

Note: If you change the Jira Base URL at a later time, you will lose any links to conversations that were set prior to that change. 

4

Toggle Active on Completion to if you want the Help Scout conversations to be re-opened when a Jira issue is set as done. Done in Jira means the issue status has been set to:

• A status with the name Done
• Any status that has a status category of Done. This includes the Resolved status out of the box, but can also include any custom statuses with the Done status category as well

The Jira app sets the conversation status to Active and adds a note to the conversation that it was set to active. 

If you choose to not use Active on Completion, Jira will still add a note to a conversation that was linked to an issue when set to a Done status. 

Use search or workflows to find conversations with these notes. More on those features: 

Search in Help Scout
Get Started With Workflows

Pro Tip: Quickly Follow Up With Customers

Create a workflow to quickly follow up with customers using the notes that the Jira app leaves. Look for the Jira issue number (e.g. JIRA-55) in the conversation notes, then automatically email your customers with a follow-up to let them know you've implemented their request or resolved the issue.

How it Works

After you install the app, you will see Jira appear in the sidebar on each of your conversations.

Click on Link an issue to search for projects and issues that exist in Jira. Type in any relevant text and the results will populate automatically. Click on Link Issue to link it with the conversation.

Or click New Issue to create a Jira issue right from Help Scout. The new issue form will display any fields that are set as required in Jira for the project you select. 

Your new issue will show linked in the sidebar on the conversation.

Jira issues will show Help Scout conversations as web links. Help Scout Users can click on the links in Jira to open the conversation.

Issues created from the Jira app will follow the time zone set in your Help Scout User profile.